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Wednesday 25 May 2011





Ahhh, May - what a fine time of year. Especially here in Brighton, as the May Festival gets going and the whole town springs into action. A real highlight of the festival has been Jardin Flambeau, a massive event/installation by these clever French dudes. They completely took over St.Anne's Well Gardens, probably our finest park, and completely filled it with all manner of enchanting pockets of firey wonder. Far from the ... spectacular many were expecting, it was the cumulative effect of hundreds of small-scale pockets of fire, in all manner of shapes, positions and configurations that instead generated a wonderfully calm, relaxed and mesmerising atmosphere. Countless flowerpots of fire rose hypnotically up into the canopies of trees, vest-enclosed candles hung ghost-like from the branches, and gazebos dotted around the park housed curious pockets of eery live music. Very refreshing too was the lack of health and safety - exposed fire everywhere and thousands of people (and on Saturday night!)

Caught some ace live music so far too, namely the great Max Romeo alongside Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, Shapeshifter, a lovely recital of Boccherini, Locatelli, Telemann and Bach, and even managed to catch the man like Snoop Dogg at his 'secret' gig at the Dome! Hilarious.

Bit slow to mention this but once again I'm back in one of the best Open Houses around for the festival - the lovely Claremont on Second Avenue in Hove. One more weekend left (it's not open on Sunday but is on Monday), so if you're in the area go and check it out to see a whole heap of cracking artwork.

I've finally finished the biggest project I've worked on yet - very satisfying to get it all wrapped up after many months! Working with interior designer Nicola Gobat, I produced artwork for seven large and four small sections of walls, along with 5 large glass manifestation sections, for the sumptuous new offices of DC Storm here in Brighton. Painting directly onto the walls (which made a highly refreshing change!), I portrayed various scenes of Brighton and the surrounding area in a continuous panorama going around the entire office. A huge job and quite a challenge but a real joy to do. Gotta sort out photos of it all - I'll be sure to post once I do....

Couple of other new bits up there too - the first of a series of album covers for Dubmission Records, my entry for the recent AOI/Serco River Thames illustration competition and some artwork for my latest mix, which you can listen to here: