The asshole / tree correlative effect

" can i leave a review on like ...trip advisor for this strange tantric fitness camp you seem to be running " ...." no thank you " ive often commented on the notion that this is a strange time we are living in ...and not un a good way i am openly derisive of many things , and as such can often be mistaken as a little brooding ,even a little pessimistic ...but in truth i do take exception to that common misconception ! its indeed a strange thing to find seemingly gaping fault where many people concieve a ' business as usual ' scenario ...its rather trying to excercise the critical thinking extrapolations from this current muddying pool of self agrandizing gibberish that seems to have become the current currency of the international stage . a whole cast of cheshire cat smiles with their hands in your pocket a stream to your brain and the gaslighting assurance that you arent being mugged and fucked but are in fact being seduced and charged a suitable surcharge for rhe priveledge, and infact everything is working out just fine .... Morons, simpletons and their pet sicophants .... and i do believe it may be directly related to the concentrations and ratios of trees to humans ,you see ...as i wander around i cross many landscapes and the peoples upon them and a universal truth is ...surround yourself with trees and running water, small colloquial groups that are indepently versed in altrnatives beyond the barrage of the contemprary narrative and you will be a lot happier in the day than you will be ... ensconced in any of the trappings of your nonsense dystopian urban habitat surround yourself with too much urban , to much digital , to much people and their peculiar ways , which only serve to paradoxically compound as they dissipate in various arms of Whimsey and esoteric ceremony ...and you will end up as fogged out , perpetually confused and prone to periods of extended mania as they are .... as I have said before ... in an international community this is dangerous ...much more so than say the Salem witch trials ... hold on mo fo's i think we are up for a bumpy ride

Russell Brand and me

I doff my cap to you Sir, when I first started testing the pop up initiative all those years ago , as a means of having a platform to be able to ask people what they thought about the invasion of iraq and ideally sell a couple of pictures whilst doing it .... who would have thought that 15 years down the line , the middle east would still be on fire, we have gone from tony blair to gordon brown to may to cameron to whatever his name is bollock .... bollock johnson is that it ? facebook has become the mainstay for social interactions these days , well maybe i am old fashioned with that assumption , maybe its instagram or tik tok or youtube or whatever the hell the latest en vogue load of rubbish is that want you to sign up and add more and more of your dedicated online tie to the sole use of thier platform , just nonsense !! utter bloody nonsense !! we have had numerous wars, terror attacks, credit crunches, recessions and depressions .... the rise and fall of big brother ( on the t.v ) and maybe real life to - gone from cultural phenomenon to cultural phenomenon ,brexit , international pandemics and now even a possible world war three ... when I first started doing this stuff, way back down there on that isolated little spit of land on the south west coast line ... people just used to think I was strange , and I suppose in sme degree we all are a little strange .... but when we initially occupied iraq and I as a retaliation decided to get toether a few stout mwn and sieze control of a small off shore island and declare it a soverein nation ... people thought me quite odd, " whats this long haired mal content going on about , recessions for? whats all this noise hes makng about iraq ? why does he think there is a problem with holiday homes or chain stores squeezing out local independent ventures ? " think way back then , before social media had taken us all for fools ! and the bbc taking us for even bigger fools sp when little voices started coming out of the youtube ether , Chunky Mark Mcgowan aka the artist taxi driver , jonathon pie and james o brien ... then what was it about 2015 if I recall , old Russell Brand started doing his trews project , and it was fascinating ... I rememebr saying to my wife at the time ,have you seen any of the stuff that Russell Brand is saying lately , and we both remarked that it was extraordinary ! I will admit that the body of work that the man concerned himself with prior to these latest works were by my assessment trivial and frivolous and nothing more , but suddenly the guys was taking in a way that was realatable , and even more remarkable was rather parallell to these idle notions that had already become quite burdensome to me so awesome stuff man , I cannot support your efforts in these recent years as more valuable , of course feeling like a veteran on the cusp of burnout after all these years grinding what I assumed for so long was a solo position .... I am wondering of I should do youtube videos and t shirts too

A mid life crisis in a societal collapse ....

well what can i say , turning 40 years old during a pandemic as the world goes to pieces on the eve of a third world war ....a self apponited set of ' delegates ' earning handsome returns as the majority of the population goes without , its reminiscent of several periods in history that as testanent would dictate havent gone well ...... so, in light of many factors , most of all and above all else i think i am a bit if a hopeless romantic really , i just adore having a female presence around and after around 18 months as single now i figured , give online dating another shot ,you see i find you lady women are to me the finest and most confounding of all the universes mysteries, and as i turn 40 i am of course inclined to reflect back on some of the amazing creatures that i have shared my little journey with so far , and oh my goodness i have been exceptionally lucky ,even more so when I consider how many of them remain in contact and on good terms , of course it seems that can't always be the case ,and in the few cases that there are , it does pain me for the former lovers that preferred to revert to strangers rather than friends , in my mind ... if i have loved you ,then ill always love you ,i don't have a means to extinguish a sense of care for a person for whom i have cared deeply . I just dont understand the concept that you hear a lot these days " i wouldnt piss in my ex if they were in fire " ....who the hell walks around with that much malice in their heart ... well anyway , the point for this little post and accompanying cartoon is because i was recently afforded the opportunity to go out on a date with a girl 20 yeaes younger than me , i knew when we started chatting that this girl had the potential to turn my whole life inside out in a very short order .... i spent a few days practicing the mantra ' you might be having a mid Life crisis ' but hell what sort of fool would turn down such an opportunity .... so we go out and this beautiful nervous little thing is of course the most captivating creature i have seen in a long while , we discuss her reflections about her consideration of ' daddy issues ' and i reflect back on my midlife crisis justification for even considering this as a dynamic .... and we set a second date... now of course this is folly... thankfully the young lady in question saw reason and decided that it wasnt to be ....but i didnt , i wouldnt have not until it was far too late , it's a funny thing despite being familiar with many female companions over the years ...i am still a sucker for that little spark of chaos, far to old and worn out to entertain it these days of course ,but in days gone by, in bustling a bar room dynamic , i recall the chemistry that used to be apparent...you would talk to one girl , maybe dance with another .. all good fun but every now and again , you meet eyes with someone that has that air of mischief , that little spark of chaos , a vibe , an aura ... an energy ....an uspoken language tells you that you are excited about each other ....from across the room , this is something that just cant be emuated online , regarless of how immersive the meta verse would like to pretend to be these days with all the online chat its even stranger and upon reflection with my much younger companion the other evening ....across the twenty years that separated us , we both concluded that it's depressing ..... but there is a broader observation worth making here , several in fact , which I am still reflecting on and may well come back to re address at a later stage

Come to the woods ...

 

Here at the Arts Hole ....I don't believe in board rooms , brunches , bullshit coffee , or the general cacophony that accompanies the urban environment 

All my best ' meetings ' happen with a little wander , a little stop and a little fire amid the setting of somewhere beautiful ....

....oh and no you can't bring your fucking phone 😆

Reflections from the road

 

When I used to sit in the Tiffany gallery on higher market Street in East Looe Cornwall , day in day out ....when I joined the ' team ' , the gallery was already the longest running independent gallery in South West Cornwall , Tom McCracken was the elusive watercolorist whose tenacity and perseverance in keeping the door open nigh on 364 days a year, a former royal doulton painter he and his wife moved down to Cornwall from one of the shire counties up north somewhere , he'd get up every day walk his beloved sheep dogs over the downs through the town and he would sit there and paint and paint and paint . " You can always paint your way out if the shit " he'd say ....and the man was a machine , in the 30 odd years the gallery was going he must hold sold tens of thousands of his little wet in wet watercolours , all depicting local scenes and things he loved .... jeez I don't even know what year it was but it was just at the end of the credit crunch ....just before the recession began , so what 2005 / 2006....give or take 

I don't think smart phones were really a contemporary accessory then 🤔 mad that they have become so interwoven in our lives that I honestly can't recall the point if origin without looking it up 🤔 

But I recall being sat there on a sunny summer's day and we had had a typical morning of ice cream scoffing McDonald's seeking degenerates come in and tell us that ' I could do better than that ' or worse ' they're very nice ...but we have already spent all our money up at the other gallery - that whistlefish gallery ' 

Now the whistle fish really was the bain of an otherwise quite idyllic existence , sitting by the sea painting a few pictures , even amid a recession ....sure not a shoddy way to while away a bit of time , unless of course some property investors suddenly decide to do the same thing just down the road ....just down every road in every town and village in the south west cheap prints in cheap plastic frames that under a perfectly pleasing aesthetic veneer retail by the bucket load and have to date wiped out over half of the little independent studio spaces and pokey little one man galleries that used to be such an interwoven aspect of the culture here and indeed the impression of the place and the lifestyle is what the marketeers kicked out in the mid eighties ....that ironically actually began the  slow gentrification and eventual asphyxiation of these places 

But on one of these mornings ....as such reflections were charging the conversation for the day ....I catch a glimpse of a guy at the shop window trying to get a picture of an image through the glass on his what must have then been a fairly basic camera phone , I shot up from the easel and out the door ' mate , I'm not sat here painting so you can have something to put on your social media ....' he stood his ground and said ' mate I'm just trying to find a signal for my phone ' ....we both looked at each and laughed  

See back then it was bloody hard work ....trying to make a living out of the retailing of luxury items to a largely uncultured demographic amid an international recession .....ha ha ha what am I saying , it hasn't gotten any easier from recession to recession it seems in the past ten years at least 

Now it took a hell of a lot for me to do what I did , I certainly don't regret it but I do find it a point if recurring reflection,  to say no more corporate contracts in fact no more architectural works at all ( unless I am heavily swayed by its ethical intent ) to just try to make a living out of the art ....and although I do produce the odd landscape or portrait or whatever ....the signature style of the original ' product ' has remained integral ,no prints , only original artworks - in fact there are now over 100 separate product lines in the ' catalogue ' and those that do try to follow this stuff will know the sheer scale of variety between say the signature paintings and a figure study in oils , the 101 reasons to choose a vocation in the creative industries and the scientific installations .....and now yes even bloody rocks ! Yep actual rocks for goodness sake 

Now this is where I am going to try to round up my point ...if indeed one can even be reached in this little window of diatribe 

So how do I price my work 😆 ....well when I started out down in Toms and my first little pop up initiatives I'd guage a painting at about a week's wage so around two hundred quid with room to manoeuvre .... That gave me a wage and some materials to do an additional painting 🤔 these days I try to factor an affordability ratio 🤔 now there is an inherent value increase because it's a twenty year body of work that has remained consistent throughout all that time ....

Now I look at the people fleeing war torn countries with personal belongings strapped to their backs and can genuinely relate to this state of imposed emergency transience 🤔 yes I've had to do it myself , and have at times such as this taken all pictures out if frames and rolled them up, grabbed some food and made my way out on foot .....so , for example if a painting was in fact rolled under my arm while I was fleeing a country under fire, then yes it's price has gone up a little 

All but a single painting in a series ....lost at sea , well then yes the price of the stand alone piece has increased incrementally 

I do by all rights consider myself a ' working class ' artisan ....that us I am happy to emulate toms lifestyle and paint for my supper so to speak , to not try to cash in on a single image in the tricky way of mass runs of  prints , but to just live humbly from my trade day to day week to week with no plan of retiring or vacationing from it . 

So these days I reckon a painting is roughly a sofa in cash value ....for most people it's a thing you stick on the wall because it sort of goes with the sofa and the rug , and makes the room feel more homely ....it's cool I can dig it 😆 I've spent enough time in the gallery floor to know 

You want to feel that you have spent enough that you can wrap it in bubble wrap and pop it in the garage , but you don't want to gamble the retirement on something as frivolous and temperamental as the arts .....again I've had this conversation over and over again , I can dig it 😆 

So between me and the customer we've basically hammered out an ' accessible ' price that is able to pique the interest of the ' serious ' collector ,..... about the cost of a sofa 

Now , well like I said now I am fricking mining 😆 and not great big industrial and commercial ventures ... But just ticking around carrying art about I have come across a silver vein here and a copper vein there ,a ridge of palaeozoic creatures or Jurassic coastal deposit

So that sort of means that my catalogue of roughly sofa priced paintings and product lines are now backed with a fucking silver standard 😆😆😆 

So what does that actually mean 🤔 

So Artby Valerio is my actual u.k company name the arts hole is my unofficial brand that us still inherently protected by intellectual property rights 

The paintings and the books I've written are effectively my stock ( you have seen me wince as I describe my diary pages as ' stock ' and my portfolio as a catalogue ) and you - the consumer base get to ' invest ' in something that isn't whistlefish prints - dodgy pharmaceuticals , bent political leanings , the bombing of a distant civilian population , or a very tired and over bloated property market 

.... As I sit here mulling over all the people that have actually supported my ongoing endeavours with fond reflections of friends and even adversaries ,the careful and the careless 

I wonder if as you think back on all the phones you have purchased , all the flights you have taken , .....all the revenue that you have willingly handed over to politicians and estate agents alike ,Netflix , sky ,and the national lottery .....and now as you stuff whatever you've got left after taxes into envelopes and send them asap out to a brand new militant front ..... 

....maybe , just maybe ..... Support the arts and the artists that are doing it , especially those doing it at great risk and great cost to themselves ...or carry in being a bunch of middle class mooks with a sponsorship deal for the end of the frickin world 

Just sayin x

Oh little England ....you sad , sorry little bigger

 

 Alright .....it's Friday morning , again ...in this farce this international comedy club of high paid mortgage interned imbeciles all locked in to the mantras of.... " keep calm and carry on " and " eat ,pray ,love " ...maintains its very expensive yet all the while utterly futile existence of banality ....

.... It's raining hard outside and if you are even remotely aware of your surroundings you can acknowledge ....that it's raining pretty hard inside too 

Sat here considering the last few weeks and how they themselves bled out from the preceding weeks , months and years is a common way for any creative to start the day ,perhaps heightened  especially in the wake of my recent 40th birthday. ( by the way big hugs and many thanks to all of you that sent wellwishings , it was a fun weekend followed by a deliberately drunken Monday night and a birthday morning nursing a hangover the likes of which I haven't seen since my early twenties ) I know I am terrible at coming into these digital platforms of shameless self promotion and reciprocating such sentiments , but I do hope that those of you that truly matter to me will take that with a suitable pinch of salt and know that if our paths actually cross in the physical realm whilst sauntering about in this life ... Then I am more than willing to break a seal on a decanter of whatevers your poison and drink to your very good health ( and this I would rather do than hide in a domestic bubble wrap kicking out platitudes for the sake of it ) 

What was the main point of this little reflection 🤔 

Well there were several underpinning ideas that got me to sit here in front of this God awful screen and try to type out at least one partial facet of what was on my mind , constantly infuriated with having to change if to of and vice versa and this for thus u for I ....so convenient all if this garbage that most of you have come to run your whole lives with 😆 

Well first I was thinking of popping up a little doodle .... I don't do this much anymore ...because I think it serves to feed the internet ether more than it's ever served feeding me ....but we live in weird and scary times and as much as I am absolutely certain that to some small degree my fringe edge ideas and notions just end up being absorbed into the digital crack and largely ignored , until some upper middle class asshole that has had nothing to do but ' internet research ' from a position if relative comfort has rebranded my concept as their own ,pumped a great big Facebook advertising budget and purchased a suitable amount of followers ....can then try to turn something I do as a passing fancy , just by chance ....into some streamlined ' business model ' prone to the privilege of all the relevent funding models as offered by this basket case crack whore of a country 

Jeez where is there a place for the fiercely independent hobby style grassroots cottage industry....are we allowed to just muse over things without having to worry about whether we might be eligible for R&D funding opportunities .... 

Everything is funding driven these days ....and the whole thing stinks as far as Whitehall ....what ever happened to the financially secure consumer base that used to support and maintain through that support ..  the discerning customers financial democracy 🤔 

Well there have been factors of course .... Personally I think there is little validity in an artist's work if they haven't first been exposed to the realities of the subjects in which they concern themselves , so I couldn't paint about pain if I had never experienced it first hand , and not as a single experience .... I would of course have to render an understanding of the complexities and nuances that encompass all facets if that determinable experience , not just catch my hand in a door and assume that I am now versed in the complete complexities of the underlying sensation 

So a painter that likes to walk Fido in a light rain and tries to talk about being ' in touch with their surroundings ' 

Is a bit like a vaccine company that was consistently sued for the cure they offered for limp dick 

Or a political party that campaigned to hang Nelson Mandela is interested in humanitarian rights and not arms sales and estate agents 

Or a media company telling you who to root for be it a sports team a local initiative or the much debated great reset 

A local council suggesting that despite imposing 15 years of ideological austerity on behalf of a gov that is clearly out of control ....that really they stand with their constituents 

It's a farce , it's s sham it's such a level of charlatan clad bullshit that quite honestly I don't know how half of you stand it  .... Suitably compensated for either your apathy your silence or stupidity I guess 🤔

But there you go ..... I suppose I should go and jump on this flight and make use of the week in lieu of being allowed to be at ' work ' today ..... 

My goodness little England ( I can't call you a united kingdom ... You are certainly not a Great Britain ) so little England it is  adiós until I am offered the opportunity to defend the very idea that an image depicting subtle nudity ...in an art room  might not be grounds for disciplinary action !!! My goodness the audacity 😆😆😆 

 

Don't get me wrong , I am all for positive affirmations for setting goals , optimising implementation plans and the good old fashioned pulling up of socks , garnering gumption and trailblazing with tenacity ....so I do get the manifestation process to a degree ...I think that if you are sat in some middle class opulence regurgitating uncomprehending gibberish about karma as the middle East burns for a fourth decade and the fickle idea that Putin or Johnson will get what's coming to them if we just sit and sip tea or soy lattes and bark into the mobile insane asylum that social media has become that everything will work out in the end of whatever ' episode ' formatted concept your reality has been curtailed to ....for precisely this reason

Silver Linings

 

Hmm I just started writing an interesting little post about metal , attached to an article suggesting that the u.k had just sanctioned import from russian refineries ...but then this horrible little toy glitches and both what I had written and the attached content vanished , fuck this digital nonsense , it's all just blunt tools for remedial works ....beggars belief really !

I got a reasonable way into saying that when I first made the public announcement a short while ago that I had in fact stumbled across a few little silver deposits amid my wanderings ....and then about a week later some Canadian shareholders interest calling themselves " the Cornish mining company " made the same announcement from a site down in the south crofty belt in Cornwall , completely by coincidence I'm sure .... of course their share price went up by about a tenner ...

Now I did consider cashing in , floating my humble little hobbyist company and reaping some immediate cash , but let's be frank McDonald's , Amazon , Facebook , Pfizer , .....all if these bullshit companies that are killing the world and suffocating individual liberty are doing it in this model ...so no , I abstained, I'm sure my position on the idea that a passive residual income rendered through commissioned percentages on someone else's labour ....well that's just the middle classes implementing an additional system if taxation in themselves really isn't it ....

I will be completely honest and openly state that I only sought to acquire the necessary mineral rights through permissive allowances and I haven't sought , nor would I the ' right ' to purchase and privatise any of the world's beautiful corners , an aspect if my reasoning was also a conservationist one , I could envisage , that undine mad dash to keep this dead end economy afloat for a little longer that the powers that be could otherwise seek to turn the whole area into an open pit lithium mine and decimate one of the last beautiful little bits of landscape we have left here in Brexit britain 

Any way ,  on Friday just ,it was ascertained that I have enough material within the portfolio by way of artworks and projects , and now suitable access to enough silver to be able to back the artworks in the portfolio with a very basic silver standard , so that's a bit like how those big white Victorian fivers you see were backed by a precious metal ( gold standard ) 

That means that like those old fivers , these paintings are an effective ' currency ' which as I said on Friday runs at a commodity parallel akin to a sofa or a second hand 30 foot yacht .... 

Watch what happens to the price of silver over the next little while in light of international events 🤔 

This is nowhere near as elaborate as the last little written attempt that was attached to the original article , but you get the gist x

Dear Nudge community builders , Plymouth city council all subsidiaries and affilliates

 Hello 👋 

I doubt I should have to introduce myself , seeing as I have been involved in official complaints procedures with most of you on and off for a decade 

But I suppose should you wish to feign ignorance of the Numerous legal disputes I have been dragged into with you people or perhaps insist that the aggressively dismissive attitude that seems to be adopted as standard procedure any time I try to raise point , offer suggestion or Raise valid critique is simply coincidental , for the sake of argument and in .....well let's make this a public response to your recent Facebook advertisement for calls for collaboration i.e the clipper on Union Street ...

About me ....

The Arts Hole international pop up initiative ..

Well , I'm a bit like you really ... I have a habit of taking on grubby old run down real estate and transforming them into desirable gallery / commercial / residential spaces, I have a proven track record of taking on  near derelict properties in emaciated parts of town , across continental Europe and even further afield and quite by accident implementing desirable and utilisable spaces for community engagement and academic faculty support .....

How far along am I with my business 

Ha ha ha ...well veteran in a forced state if perpetual transience, each exhibition has a different name and is in a different city ... 

 As you should certainly be aware , I have been responsible for developing and delivering a creative core based syllabus at one of the local training facilities ....just down the road from you , as part of the probation and rehabilitation outreach services . Of which I'm sure I don't have to emphasise are exceptionally pertinent within this particular aspect of the urban landscape 

I have broached the subject with yourselves on numerous occasions , and made the proposal that the local charity and training provider that I am sub contracted to ... Could indeed make use of a potential retail position .....the students within our key and indeed target demographic are individuals that are making categorical efforts to improve their quality of life and in many cases even attempt to reintegrate into a society that systematically assaulted them with 15 years of ideological austerity 

The pioneering Art aspect that I have developed for this local delivery demonstrates the positive influence that the creative tendency not just limited to expression of the ' Arts ' can have. I personally begrudge the incessant comodification of almost every human experience in this esculating age of madness however , in just the short time that I get to work with the students that are assigned to me there is a real and demonstrable untapped talent and potential ...that which should be both encouraged and applauded ! No better way would be for the local community builders to offer an exhibition opportunity in a venture such as your own ....

Again I will reiterate that shouldn't be news to you , 

Why do I think that the clipper would be good for me ....

Ha ha ha ...pass 

No seriously, again as I am sure you are aware, I developed what was coined at the time as ' the Valerio institute for alternative learning ' up in the north of the city about a decade ago .....a grubby old factory that I took in and turned into a bespoke space without grant, subsidy or loan, ....suffice to say I had a falling out with the local authority ( not an unusual occurrence for many small businesses in the city ) stood my ground , finished the project which culminated in an architectural showcase the likes of which has bit been rivaled in the city ....but quite by chance , the greenalize thing materialised a few months later !!!, In the end I told them to get stuffed, the judiciary backed the proclamation and I went on my merry way . A few years after this debacle as far as my understanding goes a couple of ex community connections employees basically did a. Gov backed version of my original little enterprise ...as you can imagine I took quite a personal offense to this ....

You paid nigh on ten grand for a mural .....

Your funding and seemingly in bed relationship with the council and it's basket case of estate agent affilliates and questionable sponsors 

So why do I think the clipper offering a collaborative effort, by way of making available space to encompass display and public engagement options for our recently qualified and or exceptional students ...on a nice neat 6 - 12 week rotation ....

Well I suppose you could refuse to offer collaborative support to this enterprise ....again ! 

But that does not seem to be in keeping with pretty much all of your published materials ? And self ascribed mission statements ? Funding criteria ? 

Well I suppose if nothing else , despite all the aforementioned questionable circumstances ....it would give me something positive to say about you and your organizational efforts after all ....

How do I feel that I might contribute to your mission and local community ....

I can do three times what you do on a fraction of the budget .....

For the last two years I have been working in the reform services , within the neighborhood that you operate ....even during the height of the imposed lockdowns - fighting the council to get people re housed ' lodging environmental health complaints - battling social services and fighting with my own manager insisting we keep the door open as the legislation at the time did allow for education and training facilities to have the option if remaining open ( even though none of the other academic facilities within the city were willing to take that risk ) my argument being that the duration if the lockdown was starting to really negatively effect people's mental health , and that people that were being forced to live together in the awful tennament style lodgings that make up well over half of this cities housing stock .....especially within this cluttered  part of the city ! We're better off coming for a little socially distanced , socially interactive respite than remaining in these festering pits of damp, despair , forced co habitation ! 

During my spare time I managed to convert a 3 story fire escape ( my roommates only available outside space in the horrible urban scene we were  confined to ) into a kind if improvised hanging garden and pine forest, again inadvertantly kicking off several little garden and green space initiatives 

 Being so fed up with the city and the idea that citing myself next to a main thoroughfare staring at traffic and an economically emaciated city scape and populace was any kind of opportunity to be had ...

So once again after a lengthy and completely unnecessary legal free for all with my old mates ....the faceless bureau rats that seem to run the world , I moved back out to the rural fringes 

....in the last I don't know .   A little over a year I guess I have seen multiple sets of students through to completion of the course materials , delivered in parallel with the general conscious mindfulness and positive practices we have seen individuals flourish , literally flourish, in a time when the country is suffering such hardships as to be historically influential ! Mining  ...well painting en plein air , finding rocks , turning those rock's into paints , exploring out the sources of those rock's ....again demonstrating the fundamental necessity to get out of the urban environment with all its digital entrapments and to get out into the 3 dimensional world with the 3 Dimensional people and effect the change in the world that is so sorely needed in this age of ours 

All of this the basic mainstay of the basic intrigues that have somehow rendered my existence ' commercially viable ' ....even it seems without the streams of available funding that are often hoodwinked by mediocrity before my mad little enterprise even gets a look in .....

I used to prefer to operate in as fiercely independent a persona as I could muster ...and to be fair that scale of bravado can be useful when you are trailblazing something in a city you don't know in a country you are not familiar with with a language you don't speak .... there is a definite sense of self determination on relying solely on the trade you can muster from the products that you render ....but it can be infuriating observing thousands of pounds being rolled out in these bribe funding schemes for the bin delivery of half an idea ....

collaboration is proven to be the more fruitful endeavour over competition and as such I do try to embrace this more and more these days .

My contact details.....

Well you know ....I'm just down the road on the Thursday and Friday ....generally teaching people to paint or petitioning the council to support the planting of a tree over the implementation of another parking space or student bedsit , or indeed insisting that they destroy the 30% of the degenerate aspect of the grotty housing stock they insist on keeping in circulation ! 

Otherwise I'm out in the countryside , Amsterdam for about a week every 6 - 8 weeks plus the odd sporadic excursion to sunnier climes for more than mere self gratification and indulgent recreationalism ....

Would I like to collaborate ? 

Oh dear , well the proof is in the pudding as they say ....

Would I like to collaborate .....well we find ourselves in a bit of a standoff 

So I will be honest ...I've no patience to suffer a fool and I am genuinely concerned that a great deal of the funding structures that exist are wholly corralling and in effect censoring, I worry that a few well placed bribes kicked out as ' funding support ' from Dido Harding's account , just muddies the water of this already very muddy pond, like why have we got money for all if these bloody CIC enterprise dance troupes and art groups but the NHS funding model is a mess and the roads look like Pompeii , I worry that these greasy wheels are being used to usher in favourable relationships in lieu of a righteous indignation ....are we just keeping the middle classes busy with a load of coffee morning nonesense while the integral infrastructure of the country is being sold off for scrap .....   So, Yes I would like to collaborate with a few of the actual grassroots authentic proactive individuals and organizations that do have a genuine interest in improving the aesthetic appearance and integral functionality of this city and outlying region we all co habit 

I would /could just go and petition a belligerent authority that would only offer me dead ears anyway , and well given my experiences in this particular city against the comparible successes of well pretty much every other city I have ever  made camp....on an international scale I refer to this place as a societal equivalent of a bear trap  ...but we've sewn up all routes of possible alternative entrepreneurial expression so what recourse can there be ?

...and besides I  think it'll be interesting to see how this goes .....

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these or related matters