A quick look back over 2016

When I come to the end of a year it never feels like I’ve got anywhere as much work done as I wanted to. This year has been much the same.

I know the year has been dominated by politics, particularly the rise of the far-right in the UK, Europe, and the US, supported by Useful Idiots (by coincidence that term is often—although perhaps erroneously—attributed to a previous Russian leader), but I’m going to allow myself a short blogpost pleasantly free from all that and just concentrate on the art.

January

• The year started off with a couple of sessions of life drawing where I started experimenting with a slightly different style of charcoal drawing.
• I was also interviewed by John Linwood Grant for Greydogtales.
• And I did my first collaborative piece of work, where I provided the Badb Catha artwork to inspire/accompany RJ Barker’s fantastic writing, and the collaboration was published on MinorLiteratures (with no small thanks to MinorLits’ editor Tomoé).

February

• February was a big month for me: my book of artwork and writing Myth and Masks was finally published with a Foreword by David Southwell of Hookland. There are still plenty left so you should probably open that link in a new tab so you can order one today!
• I also completed a large scale charcoal drawing called The Procession, which, combined with the life drawings I did in January, would start off something in the second half of the year.
• I also did some preparatory work (one drawing and one photograph) for a future series called Come Unto the Corn. I will come back to this series at some point in 2017.
• And finally I got a piece of written work published on the FolkloreThursday website called Myth and the Urban Landscape after I was kindly asked to contribute by Willow, Seline, and Dee Dee.

March

• In March I took a Zinc Plate Lithography course at BIP here in Brighton and produced a lithographic print of the Blindfolded Seeress.
• Then I visited Berlin and toured the sights and the art galleries.
• And finally I was interviewed about Myth and Masks by Willow Winsham for the FolkloreThursday website.

April

• In April I started new day-job. This meant that I was financially secure again, but also that I had less time for artwork.
• I did manage to set up payment-by-installments for some of the more expensive pieces on my online shop, though

May

• I think I mainly slept in my spare time in May - I blame the shock of a new day-job.

June

• In June I released the Shadows of the Hinterlandscape Limited Edition Box Set of prints of my artwork. There are still a handful of these box sets left, so you should probably order yours now if you don’t already have one.
• But for two weeks in June I had a very relaxing holiday in Turkey, thankfully many hundreds of miles from the shootings/bombings at Istanbul airport that happened during the holiday.

July

• July saw me finish the first drawing in my England’s Dark Dreaming series.

August

• The second drawing in my England’s Dark Dreaming series arrived in August.
• And also in August, Andy Paciorek, creator of the Folk Horror Revival website and Facebook group, wrote a very nice review of Myth and Masks.

September

• I have no idea what happened in September. Probably sleeping again, but let’s call it “planning” instead.

October

• Several more sessions of life-drawing in October led to the third, fourth, and fifth drawings in my England’s Dark Dreaming series.
• I attended the Folk Horror Revival event in London, set up by Andy Paciorek et al.
• And I was also interviewed for ModernMythology.net by James Curcio.

November

• See September, above.

December

• This really has been a month of planning (for the new year).