dready a nice little rum …

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dready art ‘a nice little rum/marathon man’ – 36×13 – HD archival pigment print

i wont pretend, i dont jog, i don’t run marathons …

i walk, i ride, i let somebody carry me! but i don’t run … well, i run (sometimes) when i play sports, when i play rugby or football (soccer) but i don’t run as a sport.

running takes discipline and focus, which i don’t have … if my mind, and not just my body, isn’t engaged i lose interest very very quickly … i can’t golf, for instance, because there just isn’t enough going on to keep me focused.

the idea of this dready isn’t new, i didn’t invent it … a friend has it as his avatar photo on whatsapp; ‘I thought they said rum’ and so when i was approached to do the art for the cayman marathon it’s the story that instantly came to mind and how would i portray that in terms of the cayman marathon and the dept of tourism.

it was also my first chance to use a female character in a series of work for the dept of tourism because all the sports they sponsor have been male dominated …

go girl …

rum, not run …

Dready and the ducks

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Dready, Dready Art and Everything Dready dready out for ducks part deux 18x24 copy 1

dready art ‘out for ducks part deux’ – 18×24 – HD archival pigment print

I’d been looking for a sequel to ‘out for ducks’ and it came to me sitting in the rain while visiting in scotland, in november …

we were staying in a little farm cottage and some hunters were in from Ireland and staying next door; they came with bird dogs and waders, with 4×4 s and guns …

what they weren’t prepared for was the scottish weather and the hardiness of scottish ducks! they lasted 2 days out of an expected week before the weather drove them back south across the stirling bridge like they were the 6th earl of surrey!

och aye …

bless …

dready cricket lovely cricket

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dready art ‘cricket at the mini sand bar’ – motion graphic video for Gloucestershire Cricket Club

the cayman dept of tourism europe office sponsors the gloucestershire cricket club, which is based out of bristol, uk, and i got to do some art for the project …

and so darren at tech365 group took the art and with the most basic of motion graphics, on purpose, we came up with this fun and kitschy video.

enjoy a little sunshine and beach …

peace and love

dready – a bed on the beach …

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                            dready art ‘cleopatra’s bed’ – image

“Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole world could have been changed” wrote Blaise Pascal – had she not been so beautiful then neither Marc Anthony nor Ceasar would have fallen in love with her and the course of Rome may have been different …

I dunno why I thought of this as ‘cleopatra’s bed’ as I was building it for Max … the idea had been part of a project for Sandals that hasn’t flown yet but which created, what I feel is, some really cool art … when we photographed around Sandals Royal Plantation in Ocho Rios these lounge beds on the beach caught my eye … 

we have a huge teak day bed tucked under a seagrape tree in the garden on the beach in south sound and i like the whole vibe.

and max is ‘redesigning’ the flat/apt in which he lives and fortunately for me he’s interested in hanging dreadyness and he liked the the core of this image; the bed and the woman in the hat … and so we have redone it to suit his feels.

love …

dready – the little things

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dready ‘#1950’ – 26×19 – remarque on canvas

the idea of a remarque is to find little things that take the print series and make it someone’s own …

in this case not just the sail # change and the drawing of the boy but also the addition of the small dolphin surfing the wave …

it’s the little things that make the difference

peace …

dready rugby in the sun

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                dready ‘line-out practie’ – 37×14 – limited edition HD archival pigment print

i drew a version of this as part of an ongoing project with the cayman islands department of tourism’s europe office and their various sports sponsorships … this one for Richmond Rugby and London Irish projects.
it’s cool, because I play rugby, I love rugby. I play prop or hooker, and am the front lifter – 
I first played rugby when I was 9, at school, and fell in love with it and have played ever since, at school, at high school, in a club when I was in university and still here at home – I should have been a better player by now!
anyhow, so who wouldn’t dream about line-out practice on a gorgeous day in the caribbean sea!
jump up …

dready cricket tryptich

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dready cricket

                            dready art ‘friendly match’ – 44×18 (3 of 14×18) – image

I was drawing some extra bits and pieces for the motion graphics of the beach cricket below, and had to come up with a new bowler with whom to start the story …

and as I did I began to feel another dready growing out of it all …  something simpler, more subtle …

and this was it. eh … as the last days of summer begin to fade and the light changes, softer, less sudden …

I can remember only ever doing it twice, but who knows -100 years ago as a small boy and more recently as a grown ass man(ish) being … once in Kent and once in Sussex I watched village cricket: the Sussex one is gone really, just remember the lovely pitch, down from the road in a hollow on the way to the house I was staying … 

but the one in Kent where I sat in the cool grass near the boundary – I was 9 or 10, and watched the game … probably my first time and first summer-ish day in britain …

cricket at home had been hot and dusty and dry, the ground as hard as the willow of a bat … I mean not a Sabina park with grandpa, that’s not dusty, but village cricket, farm cricket, is dusty and red dusty … there is a dusty red cricket ground (also football pitch, same time) just outside golden grove, on the steer town road between moneague and drax hall … in the days before the highway, we’d pass it, and always, on a weekend there was a game in play, sometimes would stop and get a drink at the bar cross the road … 

when I was doing the research looking at the vibes of cricket often the pictures were of kids playing on pitches like that in India, in Africa … 

shine …

 

 

 

dready – dreams of cricket

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                       dready art – cricket at the mini sand bar – 36×14 – limited edition HD archival print

I am still fiddling with this as I post it … but not so much that you’d notice a difference i think … it’s a version of one that have done for the CI dept of tourism and the Gloucestershire cricket club as part of cayman’s sponsorship of the club. And, you know, you learn something new every day, eh … I had no idea Bristol was in Gloucestershire, thought it was somewhere else (not that I should know!) Hampshire, sommerset or devon – and the club is based in Bristol.

This is part of a whole series of art, across various sponsorships with the CI DOT and various clubs in UK, that are about ‘dreaming of going to Cayman’ … the idea of ‘you can always dream’ started with the dready I did for darren turner and aston martin racing …  

the mini sand bar, at the centre of this art, was a thing for all of us when i first moved back to cayman; it is just south  of Rum Point beach, and was just off shore …there used to be a volleyball net in the water and granny chung’s house pretty much looked out on it from cayman kai … 

Since hurricane Ivan, the sound’s bottom has kind of changed, and so the sand bar has grown and filled in in spots, it’s contiguous with the shore; it moves, it grows, it shrinks, but all in all it’s bigger and fuller but in my head it’s still a shallow strip in the water …

i have a few good memories of cricket on the beach, but one of my favourite is of a sunday at drax hall, when colin was still alive, with the turners and others … it was a photo of that day that really set me off on the idea of this, but as I drew it, as I planned it, the beach began to more and more disappear from the drawing and the idea of playing actually in the sea, at mini sand bar, took over  … 

how’s he …

dready – a wedding in morocco

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                   dready art – ‘the girl in the red trousers’ & ‘#28’ – 46×16 and 24×24 – originals on canvas

so as you can tell from the titles, this is not the final final image; the final art is in 2 parts although I had envisioned it as one long long piece – in the end there wasn’t a wall for it and so it was broken up into two separate images.
some friends got married in morocco and this was, not from me ’cause that would be bad form, their wedding present from a group of friends …
it has been this beautifully collaborative bit of art from the outset – from the ideas at the outset to the getting of a colour balance that was a mixture of their memories and what I saw when I looked at the photographs … I’ll note that this image is not the final colours, close but not quite … 
you know i often talk about ‘building’ an image and this is very much that – for instance the view of the Atlas mountains felt very much like something I wanted to show, to draw, but it didn’t exist in the context of the other space the reception space that I wanted to show … so as if a movie scene or a photograph the art too is completely staged to be like a moment that happened by chance but which never happened at all.
funny how, as we discuss that idea, people see things in different ways, I saw the green-ness in the desert, or the potential for green-ness, at least, and thought that the ochre of summer reality wasn’t strong enough to compete with the pinks and wanted to see what Morocco looks like when the rains come, and found the lush greens and vibrant flowers I was looking for.
weddings are the best …
love …

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