Junk Rock! The 7 greatest upcycled artworks ever

Regardless of what my ego might want to believe I always have more than one foot in the 'don't believe the hype' camp. However, it is still rather lovely to have had my work featured in the Nokia Connects article 'Junk Rock! The 7 Greatest Upcycled Artworks Ever', alongside works by such greats as Duchamp, Picasso, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Erika Iris Simmons, Seo Young-Deok and Thomas Allen. The article was written by the talented writer/photographer Adam Monaghan and featured my Magnet sculpture, which is now in the permanent collection of the Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The article was published quite some time ago and even though I featured a link to it in a previous blog post, the original piece sadly went the way of many online articles and disappeared from the internet. Fortunately I managed to find the original text and have decided to repost it here. I don't recall the exact photos used in the original article so I've made my own selection of artwork images by the featured artists, and presented them here. 

Junk rock! The 7 greatest upcycled artworks ever

In our environmentally concerned world it is perhaps not surprising to find art works made of ‘junk’, ‘scrap’ or ‘re-used’ products. And as recycling has, quite rightly, become a normal part of life rather than a weird niche activity, artists too have embraced pre-owned objects.

But art and scrap have a long history. So here’s a couple of recycled classics and a few new additions, which we think warrant a place on the all-time list of the greatest upcycled artworks ever.

Marcel Duchamp

Back in 1913, Marcel Duchamp changed the art world forever. He began working on the idea of ‘Readymades’ – objects selected from the world rather than actually made by an artist. Having it’s antecedents in Dada and the notion of ‘anti-art’ Duchamp’s work was often tinged with humour, such as the snow shovel entitled ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’ (1915). His work, ‘Fountain’ (1917) is perhaps the most famous ‘Readymade’: a normal, everyday urinal, signed ‘R.Mutt’ and turned upside down.

 

Pablo Picasso

Turning junk into art and out-Duchamping-Duchamp in one fail swoop. Picasso’s ‘Bull’s Head’ (1942) is a masterfully simple juxtaposition. Its brilliance lies partially in the fact that it is instantaneously and simultaneously recognisable as both bike saddle and handlebars and as a bull’s head.

Picasso’s residency in Paris throughout World War II was of great moral and symbolic significance. And this work should not only be seen as art world one-upmanship but as brave (and also humorous) defiance of the Occupation.

 

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Rising to stardom on the tide of the thriving British art scene in the mid-1990s, Tim Noble and Sue Webster turn rubbish into something elegant and ingenious. In a typical shadow work, a single light source illuminates the seemingly random pile of rubbish and casts a perfect silhouette of the artists on the wall behind. The rubbish itself is often linked to the artists, such as in ‘Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)’ (1998), which is sculpted out of six months of the artists’ domestic waste. Funny, poignant and surprising… what more could you ask for?

 

Wayne Chisnall

Wayne Chisnall is one of those annoying artists who seems at home in whichever medium he chooses to work in, from stunning draughtsmanship to witty sculptures. A great deal of Chisnall’s work uses found materials, be it wood, books, dissembled scientific equipment or discarded toys. An ever expanding list of impressive exhibitions and a growing presence on the London art scene means Chisnall is certainly one to keep an eye on over the next few years.

 

Erika Iris Simmons 

Erika Iris Simmons specialises in recycling old books, cassettes, playing cards and magazines. Her popular series, ‘Ghost in the Machine’, features portraits of musicians made from old cassette tapes. Simmons says of her work, “I don’t really add any paint or pigments… I usually just take things apart and re-arrange the pieces, cutting away portions when necessary… One day as I was leaving to go to work I saw a pile of cassette tapes laying on top of a canvas I had set near my door. I thought, “What ghosts could be hiding in those machines?” I pulled out the ribbon and tried to work with it, making some writing. I watched the ribbon curl up and it reminded me of Jimi Hendrix’s crazy hair, so that was the first portrait I made.”

 

Seo Young-Deok

Korean artist Seo Young-Deok is a sculptor who graduated from the Environmental Sculpture programme at the University of Seoul.  His works are made from – literally – miles of bicycle chains, carefully welded together to crate bodily forms and heads. His large sculpted head, which stands over two metres tall took over a year to build and is made of both recycled and new bike chains. Seo Young-Deok says that he finds inspiration in many places, from construction sites to the bustling Korean markets to traditional Buddhist sculptures.

Thomas Allen

To be honest, Thomas Allen is quite simply one of my favourite artists. Upon first seeing his work, I was completely taken aback and immediately in love with them. Funny, clever, cheeky and perfectly constructed; they stood out in an art world full of tired and unoriginal ideas and dull conceptualism run wild. By carefully cutting out the figures from pulp novels of the 1940s and 50s, then expertly lighting and re-photographing them, Allen has given these books and their implied narratives a new lease of life. A simple idea that simply works perfectly.

Kraken Attack

One of the many things that my lovely partner Marie Bertin and I have in common is our love of octopuses, especially those giant ones of nautical mythology that were said to attack sailing ships in attempts to drag them down to the ocean deep. Marie also makes small, often origami-inspired, jewellery and sculptural pieces from paper so I thought I’d make her this three dimensional decoupage painting on paper (well, on thick mount card to be precise).

 

'Kraken Attack', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

The finished piece you see here is actually the inner box section before the glass and outer frame were added. I photographed it without the frame so as not to get reflections from the glass.

 

'Kraken Attack', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

As you can see from the photos I made this small piece by painting it in four separate elements and cutting them out by hand, before assembling them as a 3D decoupage. Cutting the elements out with a scalpel proved both fiddley and time consuming so I’m glad I went for a modern take on the sea monster legend, and didn’t go with an old time sailing vessel with lots of sails and fiddley rigging to cut out.

 

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

I was partly inspired by a memory of those old theatre sets where they have multiple layers of cut-out depictions of water than are moved back and forth on stage to the give the impression of lapping waves, moving on the ocean’s surface. Although, to be more precise, it’ll be my memories of movie and TV depictions of those stage sets.

 

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

Retro Post - A Cringeworthy Christmas

 This is a reposting of an article that I wrote some years ago, and pertains to an embarrassingly awkward situation that I got myself into one Christmas. It's also about one of those regrettable memories that I just can't shake, so I thought it best to open old wounds, and share it with you one more time. Enjoy... 

 

A few years ago when I was working for a well known London gallery, a colleague asked me if I knew of anyone that would be interested in earning a bit of extra cash over the festive season doing caricatures at a Christmas party in The City (London) for some big corporation. The job was very well paid, involved a couple of hours of work drawing caricatures of the company's employees - and more free food and drink than any poor starving artist could wish for.

Well... what could I say but 'look no further - here's your man!'

I got the job and being overly confident in the fact that I'd always been pretty good at caricatures at school (they'd got me in and out of trouble with both pupils and teachers alike on more than one occasion) I did no more preparation than buying myself a new set of Tomboy brush pens and turning up at the venue.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. I was introduced to a hip-looking young man and woman who handed me my wages for the night (good start). They both looked super stylish. She had a cool bob (similar to Uma Thurman's in Pulp Fiction) and he was slightly camp and incredibly well turned out. So when they asked to be the first couple to be drawn I had no problems. I quickly rendered them in a minimal, sharp cartoon style that suited their look and everyone was happy.

Then everything seemed to go down hill from that point onwards. Unfortunately the next subject wasn't so aesthetically well rounded and feeling that their true essence wouldn't be captured using the previous style, I changed tack. Instead of creating a fun stylised cartoon version of my new subject I honed in on, and exaggerated, my hapless victim worst features. It wasn't an intentional act of malice. I had merely focused on the most prominent features and run with them – not thinking how the eventual image may turn out. Needless to say, it didn't turn out well – at least not for the subject. They weren't too pleased. I'd even go as far as saying that they may have been a little upset.

I quickly realised my mistake. I had failed to fix on one style, practice it beforehand and stick with it regardless.

By this point I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable – which didn't help when it came to the next subject. Desperate to salvage the situation I tried yet another style but the only problem with this was that unless I stuck with my tried and tested methods there was the chance that the drawing would pay little resemblance to the person in front of me so I soon reverted back to knocking out grotesque renderings from the now large line of people forming next to me.

It was a very strange experience. I seemed to be upsetting an ever-growing number of people yet more of them were queuing up to be humiliated. And the more I tried to alter my style of drawing the worse these sketched monsters turned out (this may have been something to do with the vast number of drinks people were plying me with – which I was eager to consume in an attempt to dull the anxiety).

Not only was there a long queue of people waiting to be sketched but a large group had formed of slightly drunk folks who were obviously enjoying their fellow employees' visual assassinations (at this point I honestly no longer felt in control of what my hands were producing) - so much so that splinter groups were now breaking off from the main mob in search of juicier victims. A couple of them dragged over a lady who must have been the largest person in the whole company. I think that the alarm in my eyes must have mirrored that in hers. My mind was screaming 'please – not her!' but my fingers showed no mercy. One poor chap, after I handed him my rendition of him, simply looked at me with such devastation in his eyes and said 'I'm gonna go home now and hang myself'. I truly believe he didn't really mean it and it was just the drink talking but it obviously didn't ease my conscience.

After two of the longest hours of my life I apologised to the long line of people still waiting to be drawn (I should really have apologised to the ones I'd already sketched) and made my escape. I tell you – once outside of that building, London's air had never before smelt so fresh and the sense of relief never so palpable. I probably won't be doing that again - probably!

Mandalorian Tim

Likenesses aren’t exactly my forte but I will say that I’m quite pleased with this one. It’s of one of my oldest friend’s, Tim Henrick (so unless you know him, you’ll have to take my word for it that the likeness is pretty good). Tim recently turned 55, so for his birthday I thought I’d attempt to make him something special – after all, apart from socks or throwaway joke presents what do you buy for middle aged blokes? As it happens, Tim is a big sci-fi fan, and knowing that he liked the Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, I made this very small acrylic painting (painted with the smallest/finest brush I possess) of him as the Mandalorian character, leaning beside the beloved Baby Yoda/Din Grogu character.

 

'Tim as The Mandalorian', 2023, small acrylic painting by Wayne Chisnall

I thought I’d include some work-in-progress shots to show how I actually painted this small piece. I approached it akin to one of my illustration styles (mostly painting in one small section at a time until the entire surface has been filled) than say, one of my fine art oil painting styles, where I might apply paint at almost random points across the canvas's surface until the image emerges and I decide that the work has reached completion (or a reasonable/aesthetically pleasing point of abandonment).

 

'Tim as The Mandalorian (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic painting by Wayne Chisnall

You might have noticed a bit of graffiti, ‘Livvy woz ere’, painted on the wall behind Mandalorian Tim’s right shoulder. This is because Tim’s daughter is called Vivvy and I thought it fun to include her in the piece somehow.

 

You might have also noticed that I signed the painting ‘Chig’. This is something I rarely do anymore, but as most of my old friends still know me by my nickname, and this is how I used to sign my work back in the 80s and 90s when I was a magazine illustrator, I thought it appropriate to sign it this way in this instance.

And When I’m a Man… (Rediscovered Slides)

Following on from my earlier blog post about rediscovered slides of some of my art college work (and, through shear laziness, lifting its opening paragraph word for word), here are a few images of And When I’m a Man I’ll Think as a Man, a life-sized sculpture of myself as a pre-assembly model kit.

 

Back in the 90s, before digital photography was really a thing, if you were an art student wanting to document your work, you were told slide film photography was the way to go. Or at least that’s what we at the University of Northampton were told; the idea being that when you then went on to be interviewed for a place on an MA course at another university, the images of your work would be viewed as projections via a slide projector. This all seems archaic now, and to be honest, it probably was even back then. By the time I left university in 99 the only University I knew of that still required applicants to submit slides was the Royal Academy. Most other institutions preferred photographs (printed-out rather than emailed, as email was still a relatively new concept to most people back then) or to see an artist’s physical portfolio.

 

And the reason I’m rabbiting on about slides? Well, that’s because a friend of mine kindly offered to digitally scan a folder full of slides that Id’ taken (around 25 years ago) of my student artwork. After he’d scanned them I was quite excited to see the results, especially as most of the artwork from that period either no-longer exists or is no-longer in my possession. However, apart from a few reasonable examples, there wasn’t that much call for excitement. Many of the slides were over or under exposed. Although, I had expected this as, as students, we were taught to bracket our photos (take the same shot at several different exposures) to increase the chance of getting a decent photo. Another section of slides all had identical dark marks on them; presumably there had been dirt on the lens of the camera that I was using to document my work. Oh well – I’ll put all that down to experience (and inexperience).

  

It's not always easy to remember what one was thinking when originally making a piece of artwork, especially when it was so long ago. However, in the case of And When I’m a Man I’ll Think as a Man, I do remember its origin story. At the time (on the 2^nd year of my BA Hons course in Fine Art at the University of Northampton) I was using old toys as reference materials and exploring the notion of childhood perceptions of adulthood, and how children role play adult situations using toys of adult figures. This might all sound a bit highfaluting but the inspiration for this sculpture actually came about through a drunken pub conversation with fellow students. We were talking about things we remembered from childhood and I mentioned that when I was a kid I loved making plastic model kits; not of planes, trains and automobiles like most other kids were making at the time, but of things like spaceships, classic horror movie characters (or anything macabre), and superheroes. This was all way back before comic book and sci-fi is as mainstream as it is today, so these toys weren’t as easy to come by as they are today.

 

Anyway, that night, under the influence of probably far too much alcohol, I half joked that I was going to make a life-size version of myself as a model kit. And the next morning, once I’d sobered up, that’s what I set about doing. I made moulds for all the body parts of the sculpture by casting parts of my own body, and from these moulds I created the fibreglass castings. Once these castings were cleaned up and trimmed the shape (a long a laborious process that I won’t bore you with) I attached them to a frame that I built out of PVC tubing. Then, after lots of filling, sanding and spray painting I had the finished sculpture that you see here in these early slides, which were taken in the photography studio at the University of Northampton (then known as Nene College, although, it did change its name to that of the university just before I graduated).

Mariella Frostrup: Times Radio Interview

Last Wednesday (12th July 2023), I was delighted to have been invited by Times Radio to talk about the issue of London's exodus of artists, on the show Mariella Frostrup: Life and Times. As well as possessing one of the most distinctive voices in the world, Mariella is also one of our best-loved arts broadcasters and writers (so not at all intimidating then). Also talking to Mariella on the show was Ted Hodgkinson - Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre in London. 

Unfortunately, because of a previous radio segment over-running, our chat ended up being relatively brief but it was still a pleasure to get to talk to the legendary broadcaster.

I'm not sure how long the show will be available on catch-up, but if you're reading this shortly after I posted it, you can catch the first half of our discussion here (it starts from 11.26 minutes in) and listen to the second half here.

Oli Bennett Secret Cards 2023

Here are the four pieces that I created for this year's secret postcard sale in aid of the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust, which took place at Westminster School on the 22^nd June.

 

Set up on a similar model to the RCA Secret postcard exhibition and sale (which hasn't been on for a few years now), the Oli Bennett Secret Cards event exhibits a range of original A5-sized artworks, all created and donated by artists. The postcards are then sold off to the public at £60 each, to raise money for charity. All the cards are presented anonymously, with the artists' signatures written on the backs of the postcards.

 

The charity was set up to commemorate the name of Oli Bennett, a young man killed in the World Trade Centre attack of 9/11, and to provide funding and grants for young people with business ideas, many of whom are from underprivileged backgrounds.

 

To see the rest of the cards in this year's check out olipostcards.com

Chimp Pills

Back in the 90s, before digital photography was properly a thing, if you were an art student wanting to document your work, you were told slide film photography was the way to go. Or at least that’s what we at the University ofNorthampton were told; the idea being that when you finished your BA (Hons) Degree and then went on to be interviewed for a place on an MA course at another university, the images of your work would be viewed as projections via a slide projector. This all seems archaic now, and to be honest, it probably was even back then. By the time I left university in 99 the only university I knew of that still required applicants to submit slides was the Royal Academy. Most other institutions preferred photographs (printed-out rather than emailed, as email was still a relatively new concept to most people back then) or to see an artist’s physical portfolio.

 

And the reason I’m rabbiting on about slides? Well, that’s because a friend of mine kindly offered to digitally scan a folder full of slides that Id’ taken (around 25 years ago) of my student artwork. After he’d scanned them I was quite excited to see the results, especially as most of the artwork from that period either no-longer exists or is no-longer in my possession. However, apart from a few reasonable examples, there wasn’t that much call for excitement. Many of the slides were over or under exposed. Although, I had expected this as, as students, we were taught to bracket our photos (take the same shot at several different exposures) to increase the chance of getting a decent photo. Another section of slides all had identical dark marks on them; presumably there had been dirt on the lens of the camera that I was using to document my work. Oh well – I’ll put all that down to experience (and inexperience).

 

Luckily the slide I took of my Chimp Pills print came out reasonably well, and only needed a little cleaning up on the computer. Chimp Pills is one of the missing prints from my university days. At some point during the many times I changed address in London, after leaving university, various portfolios of prints just got left behind. However, I recently discovered the original plates (that I made in order to create the print) in a small portfolio that I had somehow managed to hang onto during my numerous studio, flat, and warehouse moves over the last quarter century. So maybe I’ll get to reprint Chimp Pills, if I ever get access to a printing press again. I do miss printing, so maybe I should find a nearby print workshop and get back into it.

 

It's not always easy to remember what one was thinking when originally making a piece of artwork, especially when it was so long ago. Chimp Pills (at least that’s what I’m now calling it – I don’t think it had a title at the time) was made early on during my time at the University of Northampton. This was shortly before my switch to sculpture, when I still saw myself as a printmaker. I first became interested in printmaking on a previous fine art degree course at Bournville in Birmingham, where I became enamoured with a low-tech form of printmaking called collagraphy. Chimp Pills is an example of this, but with an added element. Once I’d created the collagraphy plates I then overlaid them with a collage of images, using a photosensitive transfer material that was originally used in the manufacture of computer circuit boards. 

What I do remember about that period is that I was interested in aspects of memory, and of forming connections between unconnected things purely by having images of them sit alongside one another, and with the repetition of images. This was something that triggered a few interesting discussions between myself and various tutors at the time.

 

I’m no-longer sure why I hit upon the chimp element of this print but looking at the rest of Chimp Pills I’m pretty sure that I reused some manipulated images of pills, that had previously be created for use in a friend’s short stop motion animation film, that we both spent a weekend working on. Oddly enough, at the time of writing this, I’m sitting on a train travelling up to Yorkshire to see that very friend Lisa Kelly.

Blackbird's Prayer

Blackbird's Prayer is the latest in a line of what I like to call my minimal intervention sculptures. These are sculptures I've made from found materials, where I've done little actual manipulation of the materials themselves. Instead, I either mount and display a material in pretty much the same state as I found it (letting its intrinsic qualities speak for themselves) or I put together two or more found objects/materials to create an altogether new object, as is the case with my earlier piece, War of The Rosies.

Blackbird's Prayer came about through the tidying up a log store in my back garden. As I was removing the logs I turned the one containing the blackbird nest on its end and was instantly taken with its visual impact - looking like some primitive, gaping-mawed Earth deity. Having decided that it was perfect exactly as it was all I then did was to drill a hole into it, from the underside upwards, and mount it on a rusty old display stand that I had lying around in my art store.

'War of The Rosies' by artist Wayne Chisnall

I suppose that technically this can be seen as a collaboration piece between myself and the blackbird that built the nest, although, not a conscious collaboration on her part. Oddly enough, about two days after I removed the dried-out wood with its attached nest (from last year's nesting season), the blackbird returned and proceeded to build a new nest in the same part of the log store. The nesting site is only a few feet from my kitchen door and, as she's unfazed by my comings and goings, I've taken to leaving food out for her - partly as thanks for her creative contribution. As you can see from the photo of my collaborator, sitting in her nest, I've fortified the surrounding area with a bit of barbed wire to hopefully deter the local cats from investigating too closely. For some reason, blackbirds prefer to nest relatively close to the ground. Maybe it's so that their fledglings don't have as far to fall when they first leave the nest.

3 'Hollow Dog' oil sketches, 2020, by artist Wayne Chisnall

It's serendipitous that this new find should so fit with my existing body of work, what with the orifice theme that runs through some of it, or with the similarity to the Hollow Dogs, the wide-mouthed creatures that appeared from seemingly nowhere during my self-imposed 12-month-long oil painting challenge. Or maybe it's because of the these similarities that I was drawn to this beautiful find in the first place. 

Blackbird, nesting in the log store, 2023

100+ Small Paintings Challenge – Another Update

Back in January 2020 I decided to set myself a challenge of seeing how many small oil paintings I could produce in a 12 month period. By the end of the challenge I’d created just over 100 paintings (initially I thought about aiming for 1000 paintings but I soon realised that this wouldn’t leave me time for any other art projects, and might send me potty).

'Explosive Entropy', 2020, oil on board, Wayne Chisnall

Not wishing to overload my blog with photos of works from just this one project I decided to post about it in small chunks, over several posts. So far I’ve posted around 60 of them. And here’s a few more, from number 61 onwards.

'Hooded Hollow Dog With Hunting Hound', 2020, oil on board, Wayne Chisnall

My initial thoughts behind the project were that I'd knock out a load of quick oil sketches as a way or generating a few new ideas and trying out different painting techniques. Although some of them did end up being more considered and time consuming, most of them were quite spontaneous and painted relatively quickly.

 

'Death Loiters', 2020, oil on board, Wayne Chisnall

There is something quite liberating about just painting with little or no forethought. Obviously, much of the work wasn’t of any great insight or of the best standard (as I’m sure that you can tell from some of the weaker pieces), with many of them being little more than oil doodles or silly cartoon characters. But I did find that working at this fast and less self-conscious pace threw up a few gems; some that I felt could stand their ground as finished pieces and others that generated ideas for further works. When all is going well there’s something quite Zen about making art. In the right state of mind everything flows perfectly, but becoming aware that you’re in that state invariably pulls you out of it. Looking back at the pieces from this self-imposed painting challenge I can see the ones where I was in the zone, and ones where I wasn’t or where I was flagging.

'Hooded Hollow Dog Warrior II', 2020, oil on board, Wayne Chisnall

Apart from two or three, all of the paintings in this 2020 series are painted directly to the painting's surface with brush and oil paint, rather than being pencilled in beforehand. I really like the immediacy of this approach. You can often end up with a piece that has a vibrancy that you might not have got if you were being more considered and calculated.

'Stripy Striding', 2020, oil on board, Wayne Chisnall

The mini oil paintings/oil sketches that I produced during this project are mostly painted on small, wall mountable, plywood or chipboard plaques (recycled form pieces of  Victoria and Albert Museum packing crates), or on old book covers and recycled pieces of primed mount board (recycled from the V&A museum's Paper Conservation Department and from their Picture Framing Dept.).

Nest

I've only relatively recently returned to painting with oils. What I love about this restart is that it feels like I'm starting from scratch again, and approaching the medium anew - experimenting and learning as I go. I've discovered that some of my most enjoyable paintings to paint are the ones that I've executed quite quickly; starting and finishing them in the same day (sometimes over a period of a few short hours). This approach, which negates any over-thinking, seems to give the work something of a sense of immediacy. Often, the first instinctive brush stroke is the right one; one that looks natural and unconsidered. One of the problems of going back to an area of painting and reworking it is that your one brain can sometimes get in the way and you end up painting something that looks over-considered, and you lose that perfectly balanced sense of randomness or imperfection.

'Nest', 2023, oil on board, by Wayne Chisnall

This piece, Nest, was painted over a few hours one evening and is made using charcoal and oil paint. I think that I tend to draw with oil paint as much as I paint with it, so I consider most of my oil paintings to be oil sketches. In the days that followed the painting of this piece, I would keep returning to it, looking at areas that I could build up - adding highlights, darkening areas of shadow, add detail, etc. I could see potential for more fully formed painting, but I resisted. Many of the paintings I prefer are ones where the artist has stopped a little short of completion - ones where the workings out and heavy brush strokes are still evident.

I also use charcoal in a very heavy-handed way, rather than in a more traditional way with its subtle blending and shading. I'll use the charcoal at the same point as I use the paint (rather than the standard way of just using the charcoal to do an under-drawing, seal it, then paint over it), drawing over and through the oil paint, and sometimes painting back over it. 

As I said, my use of charcoal is quite heavy-handed, and the sticks of charcoal often snap in my handed when I'm drawing with them. However, I like the fragments of charcoal that burst across the painting when this happens and I usually keep the pieces in it. The only issue I have with this is that if I then want to varnish the painting I'm going to have to find a way seal the charcoal first. Traditionally I'd spray it with fixative, as I would when drawing in charcoal on paper, but first I'll have to look into how the fixative might react with the oil paint, and if varnish can then be applied over the fixative. But that's a problem for future Wayne - man I don't envy that guy.

Hydra Horsey (Finishing Touches)

I'd not been happy with the upper background section of this painting since I painted it in 2019. So I've just got round to changing it. Like a lot of my recent oil paintings, this one was painted quite quickly, and without any preliminary sketches (just painted straight onto the canvas, sketching the image with paint brushes as I went), so I didn't want to overwork the touching up. One of the problems of returning to a piece of work that was originally executed in a very intuitive state of mind is trying to get back into the flow of that, especially when returning to it some years later. The retouching ended up not exactly as I pictured it (the colours are right but I'd imagined it more as a few simple brush strokes), but it's close enough that I'm happy to now leave it as it is. As the quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci goes, 'Art is never finished, only abandoned'.

'Hydra Horsey', 2019-2023, oil on canvas, by Wayne Chisnall

Here's a bit about the painting that I'd written in a previous post -

This painting that I did from memory turned out a bit more sinister-looking than originally intended (quelle surprise). It's inspired by something that I saw when I went to see a school play with my brother, in which my nephew was performing. The play was a mash-up of various Greek myths and in it the Hydra, a multi-headed serpentine monster, was played by a group of kids, all of which were clad in black with black tights on their heads. After the play I was standing outside with my brother whilst the cast of the play was running around the playing field, full of post-performance excitement. Whilst chatting with my brother I noticed in the distance, two of the Hydra heads from the play were on all fours and giving rides to a couple of even smaller kids, who were using the legs from the tights as reins. It was a bizarre and funny sight, and I remember thinking at the time that I must do a painting of this.

I posted some photos of the painting on social media, during the various stages of completion, and received a few comments from people likening the rider figure to that of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. This wasn't initially intentional but I guess that there's often a lot of things going on subconsciously, and when you make artwork it's sometimes hard to block out all the external influences that one gets bombarded by. But that's also the beauty of art; it's a language with multiple readings and constructed from layers of diverse thoughts and ideas. The process of creating art is one of constant discovery, where each brush stroke or unintentional mark can suggest an alternate direction. I'm pretty sure that the children I saw on the playing field that day were girls (although they were quite far away in the distance) and when I started the painting the figure of the rider I wasn't sure what gender it was going to be. All I knew was that it was going to have a mop of blond hair. Maybe the Trump/Johnson comments influenced the direction of gender or maybe the work had already decided the direction.

The Sky Begins At My Feet (The Wrekin project)

Last year, I and the rest of the Wellington Arts Collective (a recently formed collective of artists living in or near the Shropshire town of Wellington in Telford) were commissioned by the Telford and Wrekin Council to create a public art piece at the summit of the largest local hill, The Wrekin. The commission was part of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee 2022 legacy. 

'The Sky Begins At My Feet' (work-in-progress), ceramic tile installation atop the Wrekin, 2022

As well as being a celebration of the rich diversity and heritage of the area (being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the most geologically rich site in the country) the art installation, titled ‘The Sky Begins At My Feet’, also had to have a practical function. It had to serve as protection for the eroding base of the trig point at the peak of The Wrekin. 

pre-fired clay tile intended for the Wrekin project, by artist Wayne Chisnall, 2022

Our solution (devised by local ceramics artist, Sharon Griffin) was to create a tiled step/platform around the base of the trig point. The platform was made of concrete but the cladding was of hand-made ceramic tiles – all made through workshops that we ran with local artists, community groups and school children.

'The Sky Begins At My Feet', ceramic tile installation (by Wellington Art Collective) atop the Wrekin, 2022

As is often the case with these sort of commissions, the deadline for completion was extremely tight, with just a few weeks from receiving the commission to having to have it installed. But we all pulled together as a group and managed to finish installing it in the autumn. Oddly enough, the official unveiling ceremony for ‘The Sky Begins At My Feet’ fell on the very same day that the Queen died. 

ceramic tile for the Wrekin project, by artist Wayne Chisnall, 2022

For my part in the project I made a few clay tiles, mostly inspired by my interest in nature (mainly of the vines that I source from local woodland). However, the only tile I made that was able to be fired and glazed in time to but used in the installation was one that depicted the Earth and a pair of crossed spanners. Mimicking the format of a skull and cross bones, the tile was intended to act as a warning, with the spanners referencing the region’s kick-starting of the industrial revolution (and the resulting climate change that we now face) and the Earth symbolising nature.

5 pre-fired clay tiles intended for the Wrekin project, by artist Wayne Chisnall, 2022