t'Internet

I stumbled on Sydney Padua’s blog today. Sydney is a London-based animator who with a geekish knowledge of cat anatomy. He’s recently been leading some courses in cat anatomy for animators and has published some of his exquisitley drawn course notes on the web. They’re fabulous - lively, brisk and full of cat-like energy and inquisitiveness. Animators like Sydney have to observe their subjects even more intensely than we artists - every gesture, every nuance must be right.

You might have seen this site already, but I’ve just found a site that allows you to create your own Jackson Pollock masterpiece (see the link below). Its firmly tongue-in-cheek of course…

My views on Jackson Pollock? Yes, he was an important artist. Yes, he did push back the boundaries of painting, and in doing so he opened the door to new generations of artists to create new work in different and exciting ways.

But perhaps he was too much a ‘one trick pony’. I find too much repetition in his work - to the extent where many of his paintings are indistinguishable from each other. Can you remember a specific painting of his? or, like me, do you remember just an amalgam of all his paintings?

Here’s the link to DIY Jackson Pollock painting.

I can recommend Seth Godin’s blog (I read it regularly) - and this is an interesting post. Seth posts a mechanism to encourage the business world to explore the art world AND engage with the local community.

Seth recommends that medium to large businesses employ an artist in residence. The artist presumably has the brief of exploring visually the company, its environs, employees and customers. The work produced forms an exhibition that involves the local community. When the exhibition is over the artwork goes into the offices and factories.

Some forward-thinking companies in the UK already do this on a small scale but given the vast profits of the Tescos and Barclays of this world, why doesn’t it happen more often, and on a larger and (dare I say) more commercial scale?

The blog entry is here.

I’ve been using scrapblogger to create a little explanatory diagram of the thought processes that went into one of my recent paintings.