Lost Nottingham 2018: NPF and Open Studios 2018

Lost Nottingham was a illustration/poetry project for Nottingham Poetry Festival 2018. It was also shown in Open Studios in May 2018.

The three banners were shown at Jermy & Westerman bookshop on Mansfield Road in April 2018 which has now sadly closed.

The theme was famous people and their connection to Nottingham that may be little known.

Here photos of the works. The actual poems can be found at
https://shaunbelcher.com/writing

Poetry banners at 3rd Space Studio May 2018

Upwards of Summer : The missing paintings re-painted July 2016

Summer re-painted July 2016
Summer 2 July 2016

After the paintings below were lost to oil degradation I received a request from singer-songwriter Ralegh Long to use the images on his new LP called ‘Upwards of Summer’. I repainted the images and Ralegh used one on the Lp released in Summer 2017 pics below of launch at Rough Trade Nottingham.

Two canvases – Lady Bay May 2014

 

newart'Punky' 2014 Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 24" £300

These two canvases were painted in may last year before the Lady Bay ‘Moogee’ show. They were shown but in a hallway but many people may have missed them.

I did not put online at time as they been at my friend Stephe’s from last May until recently. I forgot about them when I submitted to the Open. They may indicate where I headed in the new sequence I will be working on for this year’s Lady Bay show. Again it will be at 117 Holme Road 🙂

newart2'Paradise' 24" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas 2014    £300

‘Back to the Red Barn’ – Uncollected works

 

barn

Red Barn 2005 watercolour and pencil on paper 24" x 36" £200

I have just completed a complete archive of work from 1975-2000. 25 years of strange stuff indeed. In the process I found some images that had slipped the net when creating this current catalogue so here they are.

Here a watercolour form 2005 and two drawings from Egerton Studio in 2004.

All work on this blog is for sale.

Please use the contact email if interested or contact me through social media.

survey'Youlgreave' Watercolour and pencil on paper 24" x 36" £200

The Fake Gallery 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

In response to some early debate on Sharkforum Chicago I played around with multiple identities and created my own ‘Fake’ gallery which showed various ‘personas’ artworks in different styles – all mine ( a bit like an artistic Pessoa 🙂

The Fake Artist and the Fake Gallery

Posted on seek 2006

 

Here a further response to the Mark Staff Brandl article on sharkforum.org

FAKING IT

This article really hits home from the perspective of an ‘ex’ artist, future artist struggling to deal with the multiplicity of styles and cliques now infecting the British ‘Body Artistic’. I was a party to the initial infection of ‘oblique strategy’ art through a couple of interviews for Goldsmith’s College of Art here in the late 1980?s ( ironically just before the Brit-Art boom).

I was discarded as being too ‘traditional’ at these interviews and responded by disappearing literally to the countryside where I grew up to complete the supposed ‘reactionary’ art I was accused of. I ceased exhibiting soon after and have led a merry dance around the genres ever since and in fact came across r.d.roth of sharkforum in that dance.

It seemed then and it seems now that a a badly misunderstood ‘mission statement’ based on an outpouring of cobbled together cod philosophy (especially French) actually mattered more than an ability to develop or complete a substantial body of work. This trend has thrived like a virus especially in regard to art-training which has shed all pretence to accomodate ‘skills’ in favour of ‘networking’ and ‘business acumen’.

As an example of how far this trend predominates I recently had a show where I instinctively felt that my actual ‘work’ ( traditional landscape drawings influenced by Paul Nash ) were irrelevant to my audience and in a fit of pique I started drawing on the day of the show a series of sarcastic and irreverant cartoons about the art-world in Nottingham on basis if you can’t beat them join them! I immediately gained attention, some small renumeration and a possible future show……

I feel that I have stumbled into that world the article describes of small pecks at the rhino’s hide in search of my own artistic salvation. I increasingly over last decade and a half admired ‘polymath’ souls such as Butch Hancock (musician/photographer) and anybody operating well away from the main stream especially so-called ‘outsider art’ as they seemed immune to this ‘tainted generation’s’ stylistic morass.

It seems to me that artists have two choices…travel to Rome and adopt the clothes of the conquerer’s and become ‘curators’ or walk to the furthest edges and break down fences that border the still wild and unexplored possibly with multiple personas….Pessoa comes to mind and in his spirit I have invented any number of ‘Fake’ musicians and artists recently….indeed to the point where I declared myself a ‘Fake Gallery‘and declared my various ‘styles’ separate personas…

Only in fakery did I become real…