Tuesday 5 April 2011

IT'S THAT MAN AGAIN...

They say that everyone has at least one novel in them. And I'm yet to meet a teenager who wasn't certain they had a classic album strumming about their imaginations. Perhaps this is what distinguishes the highest of the so-called High Arts: not everyone thinks they have an iconic building or an opera in them, after all.
Maybe. Anyway, I'm certain that everyone has at least one eyecatching painting, drawing or visual design in them that is worthy of keeping. Although I'm yet to produce a follow-up Difficult Second Painting Syndrome, no doubt I have at least created one image that I'm not totally embarrassed about showing. Here it is: a man composed of letters (all 26 of the Roman alphabet, each used once only) that I have called – you guessed it – The Man of Letters.


This version was drawn in black marker pen on the airing cupboard door of the less-than-luxuriant bathroom of a house (previously an Islamic drop-in centre, perhaps solely for Council Tax purposes) in the crackhead burglar honeypot that is Lenton, Nottingham. Tate Modern, it ain't. Earlier versions did see me go to the trouble of daubing paint of various textures and tinctures around the outside of The Man; I even sold a copy – not using anything so crass as money, you understand, but as a barter: The Man of Letters (version 3 or 4) for a Collin's Spanish-English dictionary.

Anyway,
enough already. Or ¡ya basta! according to the Dictionary...
If you're so minded, you can try and spot the 26 letters. Here's the head:

Torso...


The rest...


Perhaps I should carve it in chalk on the hills of Southern England. A neopagan relic to a vanished God, as actual words crumble remorselessly into txtspk...

Anyway, if anyone wants to commission a version, give me a shout and we'll negotiate a fee. Or just nick it and do it yourself. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

legally binding copyright that will send you
to prison for an 8-year stretch, if breached