... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Friday, August 13, 2010

Block Chop 21: Nothing to write about

It’s monsoon season in Manchester and I’ve just been doing the rounds of post office, job centre, pound shops.  Walking back and the skies open and I’m instantly soaked to the bone.  People huddle under trees helplessly; children run from houses in a giddy shriek to prance and frolic on the green.  I hunch down, laden with shopping bags, and press on.  My glasses can’t be seen through, and the water drips from my nose.  Before the downpour the day was cold and overcast.  A proper respectable storm should be an antidote to pressurised muggy heat; to cut through the baking African heat.  But today it’s cold, and my nose sniffles.  Boo hoo.

An art project called PaperGirl is shutting up shop in Berlin and moving to Manchester.  They emailed me asking if I would be interested in being featured in their blog, and asked if I would fill in a questionnaire.  Here follow their questions and my answers:

What is your name?

Kevin Bradshaw

Where do you live?

Withington, South Manchester

How many candles did you blow out at your last birthday? 

28

What's a good website/ blog you've stumbled upon recently? 

I’m currently addicted to Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom website.  You can suggest ridiculous and unjust laws currently on the books, which you believe should be scrapped.  I have not made any of my own suggestions, but have had a lot of fun commenting on other peoples.  If you are as opinionated as I am, then this website is like sport.  Plus there is a slim chance that it might contribute a little to some positive political and social changes.

Also obsessed with the Collings and Herrin Podcast (by Andrew Collins and Richard Herring).  Very funny, very random, and very rude. http://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/collingsherrin/

A favourite artist of yours is...

I love the large scale paint scrawls of Cy Twombly.  I saw his Quattro Stagioni at the Tate Modern for the first time a few years ago, and was blown away by the scale and power that a few splodges of paint can contain.

Do you own a bicycle? Tell me about it.

Unfortunately not. No car either.  Just shoes.

How would you describe your work?

Colourful, except when it’s black and white.  Cross-hatched, except when it’s not.  Deeper than it looks.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have just started a series of diptyches celebrated icons of science.  I will be starting with portraits of scientists with links to Manchester (Alan Turing, Ernest Rutherford, Brian Cox, etc), then moving on to other wonderful people who have enlightened our world (Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, etc).

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I get most of my inspiration from my reading habits.  Although I love art, I have an ever increasing feeling that the efforts of science dwarf the combined efforts of the arts, humanities and philosophies (including religion) in terms of real tangible, exciting change.  Science, even when it is abstract is always striving to describe nature in all of its complex beauty.  The greater we understand the universe, the more complex and beautiful it becomes.

Where can we see more of your work?
I was cover artist in last month’s Blank Pages magazine (issue 24), and guest illustrator in issue 25.

I hope to have some small exhibitions on soon-ish, but at the moment you can see my work at various social networks.

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Walking down Burton Road today I crossed the bridge near Tesco.  Looking over the bridge I was excited to see diggers cutting in preparation for the new tram lines.  I can't wait for the tram network to extend to Withington and Didsbury.  Manchester's public transport is a fucking joke.  I can get to Picadilly Gardens really easily on the bus, but getting anywhere else is a nightmare.  There is no developed system like in a proper city like London, Osaka, New York, Moscow...  With an Underground/Subway you go to the nearest station, and from there you can get anywhere.  Not so when all you have are buses.  And when will we get the Oyster card.  GMPTE sort it out.  Buses take a very long time mainly because passengers and drivers with no lingua franca cannot communicate the purchase of a ticket.  It's going to take a couple of years minimum to get the most basic expansion of the tram system.  In the meantime, GMPTE, give us Oyster cards!!!!!!

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