Another photograph from the Guardian’s Eyewitness series. These are some of the 500 sculptures of Father Christmas created by students of the sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik on the beach at Puri in Orissa, India.
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Over the last few weeks David Hollington has regularly been bringing us new paintings. Sometimes he brings just one, other times he arrives with a couple, and each time they’re increasingly more seasonal, almost like an advent calendar counting down to Christmas. Read more
Fanny Shorter was asked to design the packaging for a new 24 hour watch by Mr Jones. She used it as an opportunity to illustrate the life-cycle of the mayfly, which as an adult lives for just one day. Read more
So we’re all looking forward (in no particular order) to Christmas, The Mayan ‘Apocalypse’ 21/12/12, The Euro Apocalypse / the imminent Bond Market collapse, the next high flying celebrity to crash and burn, the next Flood, the first nuclear war, escape to the Moon/Mars…. etc. And I was thinking how could a painter find any relevance with all this going on. But the internet is a wonderful thing for connecting anything to everything and a reminder that these type of events constantly recur, that the oldest themes in art are the best and that there’s nothing new under the sun. Read more
In his recent autumn statement, the chancellor George Osborne, as far as I know, did not make any reference to either falling leaves, early frosts, golden hues or mists and mellow fruitfulness and not that I am an admirer of Mr Osborne, I will never the less try to follow his lead and not dwell on its well know visual attributes. Because lets face it, as seasons go, autumn is a bit of a cliché and for any artist who doesn’t aspire to see their work adorning biscuit tins or tacky calendars it is definitely one to be avoided. This was (I convinced myself) my opinion when a couple of years ago I received a private commission to paint a picture depicting autumn and for a long time I pretended that autumn’s corny overtones were the reason I could never seem to start the picture. Read more
In February 1990, I took a plane from the beautiful and vibrant crazy beach city of Rio de Janeiro via Sao Paulo to the futuristic capital city Brasilia. Located in the savannah, centrally placed in the country, the shape of the new city is designed to look like an aeroplane. It was laid out by Lucio Costa, the father of modern Brazilian architecture who in turn chose Oscar Niemeyer to realise the poetry and optimism of the new Brazil. Read more
