Category Archives: books

Get people to read more

Still life with cans and glass 

New books by top authors for only £1.00 – to encourage more people to read.

Here is a great initiative – try to support and help with this mission: Quick Reads, which has a huge impact on helping thousands of adults improve their literacy, will be encouraging adults to ‘start a new chapter’ in 2013. A new website is expected to launch at the end of October, where full details of the six new titles will be available:

These books are bite-sized novels which are clearly printed and presented.

Since its launch in 2006, Quick Reads has sold and distributed over 4 million books through supermarkets, bookshops, workplaces and prisons. NIACE has led the outreach work since the start of the initiative and continues to work with employers and workplaces to encourage adults to read more and improve their skills.

 

Jenna is known as The Ice Cream Girl. She doesn’t mind the name one bit. After all, it’s a happy name, and there are far worse jobs than selling ice creams on Everdene beach.

Craig spends as much time as he can at the beach hut in Everdene he rents with a few of his mates. As a policeman, it is a restful change from his daily life, and he’s surfing mad. One weekend he’s down there on his own when he notices a girl on the beach. He’s young, free and single and she catches his eye. But on this particular summer weekend, both Jenna and Craig’s lives are about to change . . .

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Let’s destroy an industry

#chicklitisnotdead

La Belle et La Bête

via veronica_henry: As the figures prove. Women’s commercial fiction still huge despite downturn.

The beauty of the Internet, art (including  the book industry) is that we can all lose ourselves in fantasy and dream worlds – surely this is a tonic not a crime?

Interesting reading in the UK press about the demise of ‘Women’s Commercial Fiction’ – why does the UK (press) always criticize successful industries and people? The publishing industry still generates massive tax revenues for the government (either directly or indirectly). Is this a smart move in times of crippling recession?

Besides, sales maybe down in the traditional printed book but there a new platforms to be exploited – with the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include electronic resources, such as the electronic versions of books (eBooks) and periodicals, as well as micropublishing, websites, blogs,

Leave the arts alone! – after all we have little funding!

Get real! We are all taking a hit on sales, houses, pay packets etc. and any profit is a bonus for the National Debt.

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Mavericks are prone to under achieving

The word Maverick comes from a 19th century Texas land baron. Sam Maverick decided not to brand his stock; therefore any newborn or unbranded cattle wandering around on the free range could belong to him. Needless to say he was not a popular man.

A ‘Maverick’ is a person who is constantly having ideas and chasing their tails. Beginning projects with an energy that is uncontrollable. Staying up, working through the night. Forgetting to eat, forgetting to have a bath. Generally being self-absorbed in their own little world. ‘Mavericks fly beneath the radar. They possess the freedom to detect the creative vision that can lead to new products or businesses. But no one – in business …..from the chief executive to middle managers …… really wants to acknowledge their existence.’ Mavericks consider their projects to be different and new. ‘By their nature, they are not people who want to be noticed. Their ability to function as mavericks is to have a great deal of independence. They don’t want to get locked into anything.’ However they could revolutionize the Art World, make a computer loop the loop, make air travel safer or maybe run rings around the latest search engine optimization guidelines, getting web pages to number one by bending the rules (without breaking them). Mavericks are generally lateral thinkers and innovators. Mavericks very rarely finish or complete anything and as a result they usually get fired; that’s not really too bothersome, the next innovation/idea is far more interesting. This means that Mavericks are prone to under achieving if left to their own devices.

This definition of a Maverick could quiet easily be the definition of an Artist, Writer or Performer and is a definitional description of a top Search Engine Optimizer. The principal definition of a Maverick is being able to look at things from a different perspective see the other alternative possibilities, use this when planing your website strategy or planning your next work of art.

Who buys Art online?

Do people make impulse ART purchases on the Internet? If you have your paintings hanging in a gallery, shop etc then you can encourage people to look, touch even smell your works of art. High Street shopping and gallery purchases … Continue reading ?

The Hare with Amber Eyes

Cover of "The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Fam...

Cover via Amazon

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, is a book about ‘the history of objects’ or in this case a collection of objects, an inherited collection of Japanese netsuke.

Objects take on a life of their own when they leave the creators hands. They are no longer the responsibility of the artist (craftsman) – they move through history, out surviving their custodians, moving on through history and catastrophe.

 Tiny and tactile the netsuke are “small, tough explosions of exactitude.” Their story spans cultures and continents. They are the possessions of the Ephrussis, wealthy Jewish grain traders who spread from Russia to the important, wealthy capitals of Europe whose empire is finally destroyed by the Nazis.

These objects tell a fascinating story about the way the world has been molded by the need for commodities and trade, greed, war and jealousy.

Art is a commodity, a product of capitalism.

Woodcuts – Printmaking – Nude

Nude (woodcut print) This series of woodcuts is still available to purchase with a few more remaining. Originally  exhibited in the 150 Building at West Buckland School in North Devon during June and July 2011. This woodcut is printed over … Continue reading ?

The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon

The paintings of Francis Bacon have always stood out in the crowded museums and galleries that are stuffed full of mediocre British paintings.

Daniel Farson gives a personal view of his (if only in his own mind) ‘friend’s’ chaotic debauched life, gay lovers, masochistic beatings and ‘bits of rough’. This is in no way a proper critical view of this painter’s life, it is merely a tabloid’s view, scandalous, shallow and sometimes pathetic. It is a fantastic read!

The storytelling is random and underscored with Farson’s  deep bitterness – I think he wanted to be a bigger player in this game.

Bacon’s early life, which sounds positively hideous, the days in Berlin, Paris and the buggering about on the coast. The deep depression and the sex driven, drink driven highs are all in The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon. Well worth reading.

From the mid 1960s, Bacon mainly produced portrait heads of friends. He often said in interviews that he saw images “in series”, and his artistic output often saw him focus on single themes for sustained periods including his crucifixion, Papal heads, and later single and triptych heads series. He began by painting variations on the Crucifixion and later focused on half human-half grotesque heads, best exemplified by the 1949 “Heads in a Room” series. Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, Bacon’s art became more personal, inward looking and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. The climax of this late period came with his 1982 “Study for Self-Portrait”, and his late masterpiece Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86. Despite his seemingly existentialist outlook on life, Bacon appeared to be a bon vivant, spending much of his middle and later life eating, drinking and gambling in London’s Soho with Lucian Freud, John Deakin, Daniel Farson, Patrick Swift, Jeffrey Bernard, Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes, among others. Following Dyer’s death he distanced himself from this circle and became less involved with rough trade to settle in a platonic relationship with his eventual heir, John Edwards.