I was thinking today as I stood locked outside waiting for the locksmith to arrive,Mr Holland’s Opus came to mind.

I don’t know if you’ve seen this film, as I don’t know you, or know if you’ve seen the film.

Basically a young man needs to pay the rent and support his family so has to put his dream of writing the perfect opera on hold to teach music at the local school, it kills him to do this, all he wants is to have this lasting legacy, create this perfect piece of music.

Alas life gets in the way, he puts the opera on hold doing bits every now and then, he grows old and voyages through his life with all the problems and troubles that come with one, he finds 5 mins here and there to work on his opera..or opus.

Finally as an old man he’s retiring from teaching, as a final gift from all those he has influenced in his life, all his students return to perform his opus and the film ends.

This seems like the way it is for most artists (as it should be), constantly striving for this perfection, this perfect piece, we are too impatient (well i know i am) and life gets in the way…but he does it, he has to wait so long, but he does it right. He doesnt just throw out a load of crap every month that ‘would do’, he aims for this perfection that inspires people and is remembered. …and this final piece is full of his life, all his journeys, feelings, emotions, tears, sweat and blood, he has created TRUE art.

There’s a lot of people out there making ‘art’, finding a derelict building and sticking somebody in it and taking a couple of photos (myself heavily guilty) and then claiming they have created greatness… It may look pretty, it may even have a story and depth, but compared to todays ramble what they have created is mearly a piece of sand on a vast beach of sweaty all inclusive cocktail drinkers

I cant find a clip of the final opus on the beloved youtube, all I kind find is this organ rendition, which by the way is absolutly fantastic!

Safe dreams voyagers

This evenings rant is not fueled by coffee but by a small amount of whisky to loosen the finger upon the increasingly dirty keyboard.

Whilst at college it began to be trendy to have a favorite artist. As you can imagine people quickly joined the queues for Dali, escher, van gough etc. and for those trying to be particularly trendy going for andy worhol and damien hurst.

Alas all the sign up sheets for trendy artists were full, and full of rather plain boring people anyway so i decided to go on a mini adventure of salt, coffee and water colour.

The current brief being to create some stamps or something similarly thrilling I decided to get large pieces of paper and roughly draw with coffee, spill watercolour and sprinkle salt, creating some fantastic textural things…whilst the rest of the team of course used their boxes upon boxes of range upon range of pencils (who needs a range from 9h to 9b?)

These adventures in mixed media lead me by accident upon John Piper

Something fresh, full of emotion and feeling and lovely lovely texture

They seem so vibrant and full of life, rich and real and not over pretentious like the big art boys

I do hope you like these, I love them so much that one day I’d love to own one on my red wall near the log fire..ahh dreams.

Im not sure what the morel of the story is, or if there even is a morel, or even a storey.

Sleep tight