Thursday, 29 March 2018

Asteroids!

                                                 

Tuesday, 27 March 2018

The Cosmic Somnambulism of an Unmoored Mind


Thank you Finbarr Martin for the amazing title which I don't really understand.
here's my entry for the space thingie, gouache on moleskine sketchbook

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Belka & Strelka

My portrait of Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to return safely from orbit.

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

They should make spacesuits for hedgehogs, just in-case.

Memories of the Space Age




I've been reading a lot of JG Ballard recently so I was inspired by the theme to do a mock up book cover for his short story collection Memories of the Space Age. Ballard is an interesting and challenging writer. He claimed to have more in common with a surrealist painter like DeChirico than a contemporary novelist, and "Ballardian" is given to mean "dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments."
Although this may all seem a little grim, I'd encourage the viewer not to simply accept the most literal interpretation of this image. Although the subject may have befallen a catastrophe, the liberating possibilities of disaster are a central theme in Ballard's fiction. Perhaps our astronaut is simply dreaming of the gantries and runways of Cape Canaveral in the golden era of the Space Age, and will awaken to a new day, where its lost possibilities can be brought to fruition.

Thursday, 8 March 2018