Pacific Playground Part 2

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Guthlac

As I was posting this Pacific Playground part 2 started to play on iTunes…somehow it seemed to fit.

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Getting better

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Guthlac

Joy of Joy I’m starting to make a good recovery from my encounter with a dodgy curry…Yippee. Unfortunately with the passing of time my recovery time is getting longer so I’m spending a day at home.

On a more positive note it has given me time to start another painting I’ve provisionally called prejudice.

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Hello blue bucket

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Guthlac
is it really three weeks since I last said hello to Mr Blue Bucket? Well a dodgy curry last night meant that most of the morning reacquainting myself. Fortunately this time wasn’t as traumatic as the previous session – I won’t go into the reasons why. Now I’m just pale and weak. What a great weekend this is turning out to be.

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You’ve got to laugh

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Guthlac

I really don’t know if this is trolling or not I love the reviews for the new series of Sherlock that have been posted on Amazon…the only problem is the series has yet to be completed yet alone aired…it just makes me laugh Ha Ha

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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The Doctor will see Malcolm now

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Guthlac

So it is now three days since Peter Capaldi was been named as the new Dr Who and I must say I’ve enjoyed the wonderful potty mouth fest that has blazed across the internet. What a wonderful creation Tucker was who lifted obscenity to such a wonderful poetic art form. I understand that the Thick of It was broadcast with all the swearing bleeped out in America. There can’t have been much dialogue left – certainly not from Tucker!

One of the things that has struck me about all this is that Capaldi doesn’t look anything like as old as William Hartnell, the first Doctor, yet they became the Doctor at the same age. Of course the reason for this is that I’m almost the same age Capaldi and when I first watched Dr Who in the 1960’s, when Hartnell was the Doctor, he was ancient in my eyes. Another one of the joys of getting old I guess along with [enter your own list of ailments here]

So bring on the new Doctor …. Fuck Yeah!

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Scary but I suspect very true…

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Guthlac

Whilst searching the internet this afternoon I came across this scary combination of images. I don’t know why but why does this have the feel of truth about it?

BTW Google spell check doesn’t recognise Miliband as a word…I think Google know something

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Unwanted

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Guthlac
It’s a hard life being a showroom dummy. The store goes bust and you’re left pushed in the corner, unwanted and unloved with a very uncertain future. Life is just unfair.

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What a calming place London is….

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Guthlac
Yesterday the west end of London was like a scene from a zombie movie…it really was very quite apart from in the distance there was a continuing moan or cheer, depending which way you want to tell the story. The streets of central London were closed off for the London cycling weekend festival and I have to say it totally changed the nature of the city. Gone was the oppressive/creative buzz of continued traffic jams and activity – in came a more genteel rustle of passing pedal cycles. It was most off putting.

The reason for the trip was for our now annual trip to see the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery. It didn’t disappoint with its strange mix of large copies of ink jet prints, sorry photorealistic painting – Hynek Martinec’s Zuzana in London 1300 x 1100mm acrylic on canvas being the largest example of this. I think I’ve mentioned before my felling that this is a totally sterile approach – incredible skills matched to an almost same level of pointlessness. I know I’m a bit of lone voice on this but you can only be honest – these approaches to painting leave me cold.

As a counter point to this was a beautiful study of her god daughter by Jennifer E Renshaw – quite wonderful.

Carl Randall won last year’s Travel award and so had a mini exhibition all to his own. They were series of paintings he made as a result of travelling through Japan. They were totally different to all of the other paintings on display, surreal compared to realistic approach of most of the other paintings exhibited. Whether all of the paintings worked is another matter but contrast was worth it.

Before we went to see the BP we went around the Laura Knight exhibition which I found a bit uneven. I had visited another Knight exhibition in the early part of the year with my good friend David Manley and found the work to be on the whole commercial works from the 1930s. However, the drawings and sketches that Knight had made were wonderful. Much the same could be said of the paintings exhibited up to a point. This point being that some of the paintings broke through the barrier of high competence to display real power – examples of this would be the portraits of Joan Rhodes and Ethel Bartlett – both were very simple in their approach yet of so powerful.

IN many ways the two exhibitions made for an interesting contrast and both well worth going to see.

For the rest of the day we spent wondering around the National Gallery, where we had lunch in the Cafe nearest to the National Portrait Gallery. This was a wonderfully friendly eating environment – especially compared to the snotty National Gallery Restaurant at the other end of the building which didn’t seem too interested in my custom. I’m not sure what the food was like there but if you want to combine art with food then the Cafe is the place to go or perhaps the restaurant at the Royal Academy – a wonderful dining experience.

So a good day out and thanks to Boris and surprisingly relaxing one.

Simon Marchini
WWW.Simonmarchini.co.uk
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Mr Stag

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Guthlac

Well it won’t be long now before the rut starts at my local deer park. However, if you were to see the stags at the moment they would still look quite slim and unstag like. Over the next month or so they change from almost Does with antlers to magnificent specimens of testosterone power with huge thick manes and arrogant abandonment. The antlers will thicken and take on a deep deep red colour as will the rest of their coat. They are impressive. Of course much of this is show and the females, who really rule the rut, are very choosey, quickly seeing through the bluster – much as it is the human world!

So with my thoughts turning to the rut I decided to make a painting. I have an idea as to how this will turn out but that is in the future – at the moment I’m concentrating on Mr Stag.

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk

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Complementary Storage

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Guthlac
Not sure how the two are connected – MobileMe and my struggles with Soft Pastels but I’ll wing it and see what happens. First of all Pastels. A couple of years ago I spent quite a lot of money on a couple of sets of soft pastels and then failed, quite spectacularly, to make use of them. I guess one of the reasons for this is that I found that quite a lot of the expensive pigment was ending up on the floor rather than the paper. Yesterday, for no real discernible reason, I took the pastels out and again got a mixed result. Initially I was being very structured in my approach and this turn out a real disaster and I mean a REAL disaster. So I just let rip and this was the resultant painting which I find oddly interesting. I still have to say I haven’t got any real clue as to how to get the best out of the material and I made a very expensive mess but at least something positive came from the session.

Now talking about an expensive mess we come to iCloud. I’ve just received an email from Apple saying that the complementary 20GB of iCloud storage has been removed and I now have only 5GB free. So if I want to continue to use the 20GB I had better pay up or loose it. I really can’t understand the logic of Apple, in one breath they trumpet the great advantages of iCloud, and they are useful if you live in an Apple environment, which I do, but then start to want money from you for a relatively small amount of Cloud storage. Fortunately I have never used iCloud for storage instead I use Dropbox, which is so much more straightforward to use and is, what for this, free. It mets my Cloud storage needs and I suspect it does many of its users so why do Apple feel the need to charge?

So I did manage to link the two together after all. Not bad before breakfast.

Simon Marchini
WWW.Simonmarchini.co.uk

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