Retrospective Original Works
The intention for 2019 was to have fun with my art and to focus on good old-fashioned nostalgia and have a break from my much darker, intense and emotionally challenging subjects and interpretations.
Lost in Hollywood 2 was a phenomenal success and helped me to achieve exactly what I had hoped and more, so for my final collection this year I have bloody gone for it and had so much fun with each of these pieces. You need to look back to leap forward and it seems that I have built a cracking reputation for amplifying the magic within nostalgia, taking subjects that we all know and love and making them brighter, bolder and better.
I love how so many enjoy seeing what resides within my mind and how I interpret popular subjects from years gone by and this has driven this new collection forward. With how things are outside of the studio I find myself looking back to memories growing up, channelling my mind in the hope that each memory becomes more vivid. What comes from that is appreciation and pride which I take to drive on with the battles that I face, it works.
So, I hope you love these new pieces as much as I have loved creating them, the most beautiful memories will always remain no matter how far down they now reside.
I Have The Power - The Original
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This piece has been absolutely brilliant to work on, excuse the pun but I have toyed with putting my stamp on the ‘Masters Of The Universe’ for a good while now and the recent move to include characters within my pieces (more on the rationale behind that to follow in 2020) provided the perfect platform for me to do something special and do justice to such an iconic and much-loved story.
My aspiration is to fuel one’s imagination through the images that I create, to amplify the qualities and to stir the senses and to take you back to a period that is so special for so many and for some many reasons. It is this ability that I have built a reputation for that I have wanted to exploit in this collection and if by adding characters within the scene takes the piece to another level then why not.
What I am conveying through this piece is how we saw things as a child playing with these toys, where we truly used our imagination to play. We may have been setting He-Man and his companions out on the shag pile carpet or on the kitchen table but in our head we were in Eternia and we weren’t leaving until it was time for dinner!
I wish I had my toys still but I, along with my Brothers and Sister played the hell out of them so they ended up in the ‘Sandy Sunshine playgroup’ jumble stall. A low point was playing with the Sorceress (ooh err) on De-Panne beach and being called back for a ride on the go-carts and forgetting the winged beauty only to return to see the tide take her away. MERDE!
Castle Grayskull was one of the best, if not the best toys I owned, damn it brings it all back just thinking about it! This piece was always going to focus on it, with the aim of building a magical landscape that I have done so many times throughout my ‘Storyteller’ works but then take it to a different direction by showing what I so often eluded to, yet maintaining integrity and not buggering about with them and making them into something that they weren’t and instead making them come to life, to be less plastic. Through my signature lighting style and the magical detailing that I inject, these iconic action figures are hopefully as you pictured them. Anyone else have a possessed Ram Man? Mine seemed to always aim his leap straight into my bloody Nesquik!
This collection was always intended to be fun, to feel great looking back with the aim to look forward and I have done exactly that. It has been great fun, this piece especially as it was the first one where I moved into something completely different and I have every intention of building on that in future works. ‘Hadouken’ (Streetfighter 2) is a further example on how this has worked so well – so this is just Round One! Look within ‘The Memory Remains 2’ toyshop for a clue as to what could follow up ‘I Have The Power’ next year.
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- Released: 2019
- Collection: Retrospective
- Specification: Limited edition fine art print, hand signed by artist.
- Image Size: 48” x 36"
- Framed Size (Approx): 54” x 41"
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- Get in touch for overseas delivery
- Please allow approximately 14 days for delivery, should you need delivery sooner please let us know.
The Memory Remains 2 - The Original
- Nothing like a bit of pressure with this one! Without doubt the most requested and anticipated sequel to one of my earlier works so even though I always knew what I would do it certainly added something to the process! In fact, it almost didn’t happen, oh how we laugh seeing someone drive off with their fuel cap on their roof from a petrol station. What about leaving your studio in pitch blackness with your laptop on the roof before getting home and realising you left it in the studio but then approach a bend in the road to see what is blatantly your laptop smashed to bits after being run over by what looked like a monster truck.
The piece was about 80% done and saved ‘locally’ and due to go to print in two days’ time, oh how I wept like a baby. Blubbering and crapping myself aside I luckily was saved by ‘iCloud’ and was able to finish it to what you now see today. There’s a story for the Grandkids right there.
‘The Memory Remains’ focused on an intriguing, classic toy shop – a million miles away from how we shop for our kids nowadays. So, what we see in the follow up is inside the toy shop, a nostalgic feast of pretty much every toy that you can think back to owning or wanting to own. The room is full to bursting with classic games, toys and sweets in the hope that I have created the ultimate shrine to our childhood playtime. This is without doubt the most labour-intensive piece that I have created to date, with in excess of one hundred hours going into the scene. There are subtle qualities that link visually with the first piece in terms of composition and I am keen to see if you spot them.
I am always keen for my pieces to link together and this is done here by some of the toys and teddies being referenced in the toy shop that are also shown in my 2019 ‘Skool’s Out’ piece where the Summer holidays are in full swing (can’t help myself with the puns). This shows that everything revolves around the toy shop that you see here now, there was none of this shopping around or click and collecting – it was that trip in with you family or friends to the toy shop in town and you loved and lived every minute of it.
So, for everyone who owns the first piece or missed out but hoped for a great follow up I genuinely hope that you love what you see and that I have done justice to your memories. I have loved every single minute of creating this piece (with the exception of paragraph 1!) and on a personal level it has reinforced what a cracking childhood I enjoyed and without doubt those memories burn more vividly than before, the best memories will always remain.
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- Released: 2019
- Collection: Retrospective
- Specification: Limited edition fine art print, hand signed by artist.
- Image Size: 48” x 36"
- Framed Size (Approx): 54” x 41"
-
- Get in touch for overseas delivery
- Please allow approximately 14 days for delivery, should you need delivery sooner please let us know.