My own J Wilson Hepburn original oil painting

I have had a print of a J Wilson Hepburn original oil painting for many years and I have written an article about it in the past.

I love the atmospheric nature of the print and the depth and richness of the blues which means I cant stop looking at it. One of the reasons I wrote the previous article was to try to find other prints / paintings that might be by the same artist.

Well finally on ebay I have found and bought an original oil painting by J Wilson Hepburn.

It is a huge 56 inch by 23 inch painting (including the frame) called "Channel Bound". It is as atmospheric and spellbinding as the bishops rock print I also own. Now all I have to do is find a suitable house and room to display it in.

It is still in its original frame and has a note from J Wilson Hepburn himself which states:

"This picture should be varnished approx. six months after acquisition, this should be undertaken professionally as it is important that the right materials are employed."

The label also has the J Wilson Hepburn's name and address in Fowey.

Another useful point is that the label has been signed by the person that did the varnishing as completed on 26/07/71 which nicely puts the picture as being painted in late 1970 or very early 1971.

All in all some very useful information to add to the J Wilson Hepburn factfile.

Everything can be found somewhere on the internet where everything means 99%

The all mighty google search these days means that anything no matter how obscure can be typed into its search box and before you know it you are surfing through thousands of pages about some obscure tiny subject.

However, every so often I run a search on google which reminds me that even given the infinite large number of pages of the internet I still cannot find the one page I want.

When I was young probably around 15 years ago I went to the Scilly Islands and at the time I found a print which I just had to buy. Cant remember how much it cost. My parents bought it for me and it has been one of my most prize possessions ever since especially as my parents had it framed for me.

So one evening I am looking at this modern print which is a picture of Bishop's rock lighthouse in the moonlight in oils by J Wilson Hepburn. I think to myself I could use the *awesome* power of the search engine to find out more about this artist and see if there are other prints I would like.

So I pop along to google and type in the words "J Wilson Hepburn".

Google Search for J Wilson Hepburn

All you get is a few hints that there are indeed originals that have been sold at auction for not very large amounts but no sign of any prints.

Lot 33 - J. Wilson Hepburn - oil on board A view of St Mawes.

Lot 40 - J. WILSON-HEPBURN (XX): An oil on artist's board of the Fish Market and harbour of Mevagissey.

Bonham's - J. Wilson Hepburn, Moonlit river scene, oil on canvas, signed, 60 x 90cm. £94.

Just hints of things and the links don't really give you any further information.

Of course in searching it doesn't help that the surname is similar to "Audrey Hepburn"

Here is what I know I think he is a Cornish artist that painted in oils, I suspect in the late 1800's. Other than that I know very little.

If anyone could give me more information I would be very interested. If anyone knows of any prints or originals for sale I would at the very least be interested in hearing more. If anyone has the original of my print which I would guess is somewhere in the Scilly Isles I would be extremely interested.

Until I get this information and can post it on my blog I am afraid we must conclude that as of now the world is still larger and contains more information than the internet.

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination part 2

The spiders web that is Oxfords road network.

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination

I find myself strangely fascinated by coloured lines intertwined together, especially if it is a pattern based on something man made or familiar to me.

This is a hand drawn colour line copy of a 1914 clearing house railway junction diagram of the area around clapham junction (the big confusing area over on the left). If you want to you can compare it to the original over here on wikipedia.

Maybe I have discovered a whole new art form with which you can experiment with on any map or satelitte photgraphy, just drawing designs. Today the web tommorrow Tate Britain.

Post ironic modernism

I have invented a new art form, it is called post ironic modernism. I still have not quite worked out what it actually is or what constitutes post ironic modernism but I have a few examples.

Example 1 - Well Bupa, you did ask.


Example 2 - The alternative start to Love Actually, Debate Actually (if it helps imagine Hugh Grant saying it in the same style)

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world I think about the "Have your say" pages at the BBC news site. General opinion is starting to make out we live in a world of nutters and madness but I don't see that. It seems to me that the population of the UK is some 60 million people and even the most popular posts are recommended by only 600 people which suggests that intelligent debate does still go on, just not on the internet. Often its not particularly dignified or newsworthy but its always there. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the stock markets were crashing as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people in the banks were messages of hate or revenge, they were message of thought and hope. If you look for it I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that intellectual debate actually is all around

Most famous people on one picture"

This is an interesting picture I found through Stumble.

The title is "Most famous men in one photo". There are two things wrong with this title, firstly that there are women in the pictures and secondly it is not a photograph.

Those pedantic points aside it is a fascinating picture. Even if the first thing you do is count how many famous people you recognise rather than just appreciate it as a piece of art.

Devorah Sperbler - pixelated abstract sculptures

These are absolutely fascinating. I first saw an example of these sculptures in New Scientist magazine.

Basically just as a pixelated picture is made up of single pixels of a certain colour, Devorah makes up sculptures out of spools of thread of a single colour.

As Devorah says in the New Scientist article (17 March 2007, pp 52):

"As a visual artist I cannot think of a topic more stimulating and yet so basic than the art of seeing"

- Devorah Sperber

The Science bit is appreciating how our minds process visual information and put it all together to from an image. The idea is that the sculpture makes us think about how the brain interprets the world around which may not be quite the same. The brain could be said to be playing tricks on us, in the same way that movies are still pictures but our brain processes them into moving pictures.

The world is not always quite as our eyes see it.

Stumble upon

This is another kind of social bookmarking site that I have discovered and I have to say it is cool I might even say it is the best thing since sliced bread.

Basically you sign up for an account specific some interests, download the firefox / IE toolbar and then stumble through the web. This means basically click on the stumble icon and it will take you to a random page. However the neat thing is it takes you to a popular page which has been rated by other users.

It takes you to some really great stuff that you would just not discover otherwise, already with in about five clicks I have found a awesome photo site 'young gallery' and a page of haiku error messages.

Plus if you don't like the page you just hit the stumble button again.

Of course when you look at a site you can give it the thumbs up or thumbs down to adjust the rating. This simple interface has the simplicity of the google search page. Of course it has plenty of other options to explore as well.

This is just what the web has been crying out for, it is such a great idea it will probably be snapped up by the big companies and be renamed 'google stumble upon'.

"Next time you want to wander the Web, forget about Googling it. Stumble it."

- The Wall Street Journal

New Scientist cover art

The Royal Mail do framed collections of a year's stamps recognising that the stamps are often art work in themselves.

New Scientist magazine should consider doing the same, some of their cover art is inspired and even better you get a new one each week. The only disadvantage is that the cover is always cluttered up with text of what's inside.

To illustrate the artistic nature of the covers, I took the original covers, de cluttered them and the put them in a nice collage. These are some of my favourite covers out of the magazines that I had hanging around. All from either 2006 or 2007.

All copyright belong to New Scientist magazine. On their website you can often see examples of covers and in the archive are all the covers from recent years.

Eyescapes

Click on the link above to navigate through to the Eyescape gallery or read about it in a NewScientist article.

Rankin, a london based photographer has taken macro pictures of eye irises.

The variety of colours and patterns are truly amazing. Sadly you have to go to his website for a picture as there is not a sample I can put up for your viewing pleasure. Well worth a look though.

Looking into eyes is sometimes thought of as looking into the very being and existence of a person. Eyes themselves can be very expressive displaying the full range of emotions. All this makes them intrinsically interesting and this macro view of different irises by Rankin is truly fascinating.

You could almost loose yourself in the photographs just as you can sometimes loose yourself in someone's eyes. No longer will it be possible to categorise someone as having just brown eyes.