Dready, Dready Art and Everything Dready dready 2Brugby 2Bon 2Bthe 2Bbeach 2Bshane 2B37x14 2Bcopy

dready rugby in the sun

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 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 …

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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 …

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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 …

dready the lover and the fighter

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dready art ‘the lover and the fighter – 14×14 – image

I was drawing the character on the left and afterward I realised that he reminded me of a few people well that I knew growing up, but especially, because of the way he is standing, he reminded me of a doood named ‘big basil’ …

big basil was part of our weekend social scene when we were in college, ’cause big basil went to a different school, but we all went to the same parties and clubs on a weekend …

Two things about BB were that he was very very tall, so when you walked into the club you’d see him from across the room, in the midst of the dance floor, sticking out the top of everyone else, dancing away with an invariably pretty gyal, and also invariably, BB also would have his shirt off …

round them times too, me and ‘small basil’, who was only small compared to the big one, were often moving ’bout together, along with a tight west indian crew the core of which was a group of jamaicans …

so anyhow the drawing reminded me of both the basil’s … and of me and small basil and we were definitely the lover and the fighter …

and so i added the character on the right … enter the dragon …

big love …

dayz …

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dready art – a lucky man

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the walking gallery – ritz carlton grand cayman 2020

dready is a very fortunate artist …

in the midst of a pandemic in the gallery of a virtually empty hotel 6 pieces sold to 5 buyers in one week …

this has been the story of my global madness, dready has continued to sell around the planet as if the world had not come to a virtual standstill …

blessed …

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dready – not just a pretty face

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dready art – webster line boats: rosalie belleveau, eros and vagabondia – 28×10 – HD acrylic archival pigments and hand drawn digital art on canvas – on the wall in the national gallery.

these 3 dreadys are part of a Maritime Heritage group show running right now at the National Gallery of Cayman Islands …

they were actually originally ‘commissioned’ (actually I think requested is a better word) by the National Gallery for a Maritime Heritage show in 2017 … I was having a discussion with the director when she said nobody has submitted anything about cayman place in the maritime trade to the world and the lifeline that ships gave to what were then very isolated islands.

and I had just been chatting with a friend whose family, the websters, had had one of the great caribbean shipping lines around the turn of the last century and he’d been building an online history of the family’s shipping business.

I chose 3 webster line boats corresponding to the early, middle and final years of the company …

after the show I turned the art into a print series with copies travelling the world – best moment was when a now retired gentleman emailed me from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to say his father had sailed on the Eros and had so many great stories … I sent him a copy to remind him of his father.

these three belong to the Westin family of grand cayman.

There are actually 4 dreadys in the permanent/national collection of cayman islands (these 3 are not, they are on loan) and dready is considered to be art of ‘national cultural significance’ … not just a pretty face, eh.

Boss and …

cool …

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dready – the kids are alright

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dready art – the kids are alright #3 – 20×21 – original commission on canvas

as part of a whole commission of a family I was asked to separate out the kids and make some art of their own based on the characters I’d developed for the family portrait

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dready – the kids are alright #2 – 20×21 – original commission on canvas

when you look at a family of 4 kids and how their personalities differ eh, not just by age difference but the things that they grow to like …

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dready – the kids are alright #1 – 20×21 – original commission on canvas

how they see themselves in the scheme of things and the family dynamic …

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dready – the kids are alright #4 – 20×21 – original commission on canvas

and how, despite the family unit, become these individual humans …

youth …

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dready Richter’s Blues

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dready art ‘Richter’s Blues’ – 40×16 – remarque on paper

another dready remarque in July was this for a family in North Carolina – drawing in characters and changing colours in the dready catboat – was also a secret anniversary gift that I couldn’t share until it was delivered.

love was in the air in July is all I can say to you, because there’s yet another dready, an original commission of a wedding, from July that I am fine tuning and still can’t show because it’s not public knowledge yet …

so despite all the dramas in the world, or perhaps because of it, people are realising the love they feel for their partners and family, the importance of them all …

romance …

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dready art a wedding in paradise

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dready ‘a wedding at good hope’ – 20×30 – remarque on canvas

although, if you look on the dates of the blog posts below it looks like i had a quiet July, the truth is there was a lot of sneaky art going on in the background, things that were secret and couldn’t be shown …

this little anniversary dready remarque was one … this couple had been married at one of my favourite places, good hope in Jamaica, a place where I have spent a lotta lotta time … and he wanted to surprise her with my adding them to the existing coach house drawing.

i’ve always loved this for the vibe and the colours

wowness …