Notes from the sketch book

A lone gunslinger rides into a desolate, corrupt town, and you can almost feel the dust settle around him. In A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood plays the Man with No Name, a figure so enigmatic and taciturn that he might as well be a ghost. Just don't laugh at his mule. “ I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him.”  It’s a border town, torn apart by two warring factions—the Rojo brothers, who run the smuggling trade, and the Baxters, the town’s so-called...

In this new art collection and series of 'Notes from the Sketchbook,' I’m diving into the Western genre, with a special focus on Clint Eastwood’s journey from 1950s TV star to iconic movie figure. Eastwood’s rise to stardom came through Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, those spaghetti Westerns that reinvented the genre. I’ll be watching, reviewing, and creating art inspired by these films, tracing how Eastwood’s image evolved, leading to his masterful deconstruction of both the Western and his own mythos in Unforgiven. But before I start with A Fistful of Dollars, we have to look East—back to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the...

Well after an extended break Notes from the sketch book is back, in these notes I'll be looking at the new Alien movie by Fede Álvarez, Alien Romulus. I've always been a big fan of the Alien movies , I watched the first one (directed by Ridley Scott) when I was far too young and the sequel holds up as one of the best action movies ever made. The design of the xenomorph by H. R. Giger is a timeless, nightmarish vision that is at the heart of the movies. The writer of Alien, O’Bannon presented Scott with a copy...

Last Saturday, something incredible happened: I became a featured artist at Upfest Presents! While Bristol's buzzing street art scene has always inspired me, I never imagined I'd play a small part in celebrating it. So, when I got the email saying my work was chosen out of over 900 applicants, a wave of excitement (and maybe a touch of terror) washed over me. This year, the iconic Bristol street art festival has undergone a metamorphosis, emerging as Upfest Presents: a sprawling, 17-day celebration of creativity of a festival experience. Having never been to Upfest before, I wasn't sure what to...

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: an Echo of the past I am absolutely a sucker for primate related movies and media. Scrap that, Im fascinated by primates full stop. I'm lucky enough to live near and have visited several times, Monkey World. It's an amazing place that looks after chimpanzees and other primates that have been mistreated or rehomed. I've even made an unreleased art collection called Primate Planet where pop culture references are made into primate themed prints. American psycho monkey or primate Batman and Superman down the pub? Anyway that's for another time, perhaps. Whether it's...