Category Archives: Influences

A&BC Cards – full of blood, gore, and sadistic acts

war_cards

BATTLE CARDS A&BC Chewing Gum Cards

World War II cards known as ‘Battle’ trading cards 1965 were incredibly graphic: full of blood, gore, and sadistic acts. With our second millennium disposition and political correctness they seem strange, from another world, unacceptable, shocking – they are also tiny works of popular art (pop art) graphic art / illustration – but above all outrageous. Even during the 1960s they were classed as subversive, perverse and dangerous for children to look at, so dangerous in fact that A&BC Ltd. were charged under the Obscene Publications Act in 1968 for publishing theses images.

Early Post War Britain was a very different place than it is now, the victory over Germany and Japan was still fresh in Britain’s consciousness – I can remember seeing a former Japanese prisoner of war walking around my town, he had white hair, dark sunken eyes and the haunted look of a condemned man. Horror and the reality of war was still evident so the images of war on these cards were not so shocking to a 10 year old – but aren’t todays video games more shocking?

The Battle cards were painted by Norman Saunders, Maurice Blumenfeld, Ed Valigurski, and Bob Powell.

 

(Land Of) Hope

The bells ring out for obedience,

Like a chorus of funeral bells.

The drugged out hippy cries for peace,
And then tries to find his head.

Bloody whores whip them,
Watch them bob and dance.

On the end of a rope,
On the end of a joke.

 

The #Beatles – trading cards better than the real thing

beatles_cards

The Beatles A & B C Chewing Gum Ltd (second series)

I understand the joys of collecting things like stamps, trading crds etc. there is alway the pleasure of finding, buying that elusive one that will make the set. Chewing gum cards were my thing when I was small – I loved the chance element, the hope of getting what I wanted. I no longer collect things but I still love chance, which is why I now do the lottery.

The Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act and producer George Martin enhanced their musical potential. They gained popularity in the United Kingdom after their first hit, “Love Me Do”, in late 1962. They acquired the nickname “the Fab Four” as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the following year, and by early 1964 they had become international stars, leading the “British Invasion” of the United States pop market.

In 1962 / 63 Douglas Coakley of A & BC Chewing Gum Ltd, approached Brian Epstein, The Beatles manager, and his lawyer David Jacobs, to obtain the rights to produce trading cards featuring photographs and autographs of the Beatles. A set of 60 cards was produced and issued in 1964. The photographs were provided to A&BC Chewing Gum Ltd courtesy of Nems Enterprises Ltd, Brian Epstein’s company, and appear to be mostly taken in 1963 and maybe 1962. A second series quickly followed.

I love Beatles ephemera – I hate their annoying music

As far as I am concerned they are not the massive influence on popular music they are claimed to be – mediocrity comes to mind.

#naked #shave

Vanity in the bathroom – do I shave my face or my shoulders? A constant dilemma for the modern middle aged man — at Jandia Princess Club.

face

Artist Statement (these snippets could be mine) #bullshit

The Genetics of Painting?
There are various ways of making Paintings to recipes, each becoming a question of process and discovery, controlling chance, arranging colour with simple brush strokes, dragging or pouring paint across the surface to reveal a vast range range of effects. The act of painting can be reduced to its most simple and material elements, new materials can be discovered and played with……Is this really painting?….. what is the process/purpose of the creation? Behind the rhetoric and bullshit there must be a reason….otherwise YCRE8.

Peter Bright – Artist Statement (these snippets could be mine)

Words taken out of context lose their meaning. Publishing documents that contain controversial language puts the author at risk. Any constructed environment can promote alienation, but it can also enhance communication to form a quasi-organic platform for human interaction. The fact that most of us have an on-line persona suggests that computer communication enables us to visit places and have discussions with people we would normally avoid. We are engaging in the pseudo-anonymous system/society. Underground activities have migrated out of analog media (the printed word, film etc.) into ‘this world’. This world has evolved into a global system with multiple layers in which new authorities compete to control its uses; platform wars, chip races, and operating system alliances. The pseudo-identity of the user is being exposed; law is punishing non-conformity, censorship and the rules of globalization have invaded the system. The Klondike Spirit has taken over the open system and turned it into the homogenized high street we all know.

(A non-homogeneous system, whose terms and relationships are not constant, allows language to break up, to stumble over the rules of its grammar, by necessity it has to respond radically to other linguistic components, creating a new linguistic order and syntax. )

Memories: Renoir, dead birds and rubber gloves, stolen kisses, life, stillness, pouches of Chinese fresh drinking water, broken dreams, lost lovers, onions, sections of discarded fishing nets strewn across the tourist beach, lovers in the darkness groping for the dark, hands first finding spaces, then they find there mark, my father, my ghost, my hopes and dreams, stinking of rotting carcasses [Read More]

imageParadigm: Clients are always shocked when I suddenly present to them a ‘painting from life’ – I appear to produce slap-dash imagery as my main artistic process, this isn’t because I haven’t mastered the basic fundamental skills of ‘traditional’ painting and drawing because I have and I am more than able to produce paintings in a typical style or pattern of work; a pattern or mode of working, arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations(hips) to the real world.

onions

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Artist Statement (these snippets could be mine) #bullshit

The Genetics of Painting?
There are various ways of making Paintings to recipes, each becoming a question of process and discovery, controlling chance, arranging colour with simple brush strokes, dragging or pouring paint across the surface to reveal a vast range range of effects. The act of painting can be reduced to its most simple and material elements, new materials can be discovered and played with……Is this really painting?….. what is the process/purpose of the creation? Behind the rhetoric and bullshit there must be a reason….otherwise YCRE8.

Peter Bright – Artist Statement (these snippets could be mine)

Words taken out of context lose their meaning. Publishing documents that contain controversial language puts the author at risk. Any constructed environment can promote alienation, but it can also enhance communication to form a quasi-organic platform for human interaction. The fact that most of us have an on-line persona suggests that computer communication enables us to visit places and have discussions with people we would normally avoid. We are engaging in the pseudo-anonymous system/society. Underground activities have migrated out of analog media (the printed word, film etc.) into ‘this world’. This world has evolved into a global system with multiple layers in which new authorities compete to control its uses; platform wars, chip races, and operating system alliances. The pseudo-identity of the user is being exposed; law is punishing non-conformity, censorship and the rules of globalization have invaded the system. The Klondike Spirit has taken over the open system and turned it into the homogenized high street we all know.

(A non-homogeneous system, whose terms and relationships are not constant, allows language to break up, to stumble over the rules of its grammar, by necessity it has to respond radically to other linguistic components, creating a new linguistic order and syntax. )

Memories: Renoir, dead birds and rubber gloves, stolen kisses, life, stillness, pouches of Chinese fresh drinking water, broken dreams, lost lovers, onions, sections of discarded fishing nets strewn across the tourist beach, lovers in the darkness groping for the dark, hands first finding spaces, then they find there mark, my father, my ghost, my hopes and dreams, stinking of rotting carcasses [Read More]

imageParadigm: Clients are always shocked when I suddenly present to them a ‘painting from life’ – I appear to produce slap-dash imagery as my main artistic process, this isn’t because I haven’t mastered the basic fundamental skills of ‘traditional’ painting and drawing because I have and I am more than able to produce paintings in a typical style or pattern of work; a pattern or mode of working, arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations(hips) to the real world.

onions

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Let go #tarot

Tarot 10 April 2014

Sometimes it is better to just let things happen, leave things to fate, the will of God or turn a card.

No matter how hard you try to make things right or better it just won’t work, love, family, work – but maybe it is not suppose to be easy or happen? Nonsense maybe the will to make it work isn’t there in the first place.

Today I Turned the Tarot Cards…

The Page of Wands very often indicates a literal person in our lives. It can indicate a female who is younger than the curious card turner. Wands as people are usually warm, ambitious, and sometimes high achievers. The Page of Wands indicates the energy of easy distraction but can also indicate things that have been started or dreamt about (some time ago) are starting to come to fruition. The Page of Wands can also show a longing or desire for new things to explode into life, adventures, approaches, and new ideas. The Page brings positive energy but – there has to be the will to follow through.