Bognor Artists Have Been Reading This Week

www.antoniarolls.co.uk for my website
www.jesusonthetube.co.uk for the Jesus on the Tube image and story
www.agracefuldeath.blogpsot.com for the A Graceful Death exhibition, paintings from the end of life.


http://www.wefund.co.uk/project/graceful-death-film  Go to this link to donate and find out about the A Graceful Death, the Film.  See our video explaining what we are doing, and be part of the team help us to raise the funds to make the film brilliant.

Bognor Artists Have Been Reading This Week

 We have been resting lately, we Artists in Bognor.  I say "Artists" and mean this loosely.  If I was being specific, I would say "Artist".  There is, as far as I know, only me in any of these movements.  I have named some associates, but they don't know about it.  They are not aware that they have been linked to the Bognor Art Revolutions as they happen from week to week.  For example, the Artist Friend in Middleton.  Well, she is a very good artist indeed and doesn't suffer fools gladly.  So far, she suffers me happily, but I dont want to alarm her and tell her she has been linked with - as I recall - Bognor Impressionists.  I may become a Fool and she will Stop Suffering Me At All.   The maths tutor in Barnham, who has been standing in for the maths side of things in the Bognor Renaissance, has no idea that I am even an artist.  It is best that he remains in his world of Algebra and Equations as he may not like the idea of representing the whole of Maths for an entire movement that he probably has no time for.  (The Bognor Renaissance).  He is very nice and it is in my interests that he represents our Bognor Renaissance without his knowledge.  We never found an architect, come to think about it.  There are lots of Barrett homes being built in Bognor at the moment, so maybe that can represent architecture in a rather vague way.  I am sure they are very intelligent and can tell us about Architraves and Doric Columns if we asked them.

As for Angst and Surrealism, Bognor doesn't need me to start an Art Movement to introduce them.  There are plenty of Angst ridden folk around here.  The word, if you remember, means Fear and Anxiety in Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and German.  And Bognor.  There is much deep seated spiritual fear and insecurity in the free human being along the high street here, and sometimes along the seafront too.  Very evident at closing time.  Which brings me to the Bognor Fishermen who have been representing, quite without their knowledge, the idea of Pre Raphaelite Bognor.  I did say that they ranged, in our paintings, in the pubs along the Bognor Seafront, from Sentimental Fishermen to Maudlin Fishermen to Pie Eyed Fishermen.  There is the wonderful idea of painting a Pre Raff masterpiece of real life along the shores of Biblical Galilee using the Bognor Pier and any number of Fishing Folk from the Bars alongside it.  There will be a moral in the painting, we will have to decide what it is.  Victorians liked morals, and this Bognor Pre Raff movement needs to decide whether we have moved on from that kind of stuff or not.

Surrealism was great fun.  We needed to sleep a lot to get our ideas.  I am still working on that.

Our Dada movement was singular in that we had a Supreme Leader.  My old friend Gair Dunlop was given the job, and at least was informed that that was his role.  Whether he wanted it or not was not considered necessary.  Gair, if you recall, was a member of that profound movement, the Aberdeen Dadaists, in about 1980ish in Aberdeen.  It was formed of three people, and only two of them knew what it was about.  Gair was one, Eddie Fisher was the other and I was the third.  I was the one who didn't know what it was about, but liked Gair and Eddie very much and went along for the ride.  It lasted about two weeks.

On to the Fauves. My idea was to let the Wild Animal in us (me) loose, and recreate Bognor as a Fauve painting.  Fauve means Wild Animal, and we (I) liked the thought that we (I) could let the inner wild beast out and go mad with wild and passionate brush strokes in reds, and oranges and yellows.  I thought that Bognor would suit a Fauve Overhaul.  The idea was to get the local council to fund the overhaul and to make Bognor into a Matisse or Derain painting.  That was very stirring stuff.

I forgot to mention that within this group of Artists that don't know they belong to any of these Bognor Art Movements, is a philosopher and author.  She wouldn't mind a bit, if she knew.  And if she did know, if she remembered.  She would intellectualise it all with panache and talk it over with her husband.  Between them, they would be witty and amusing and very insightful and then forget about it.  

So now.  This reading that we have been doing.  We are creative here, in Bognor.  We can turn our hands to many different methods of expression; for example the other day I customised a teacosy for the Glorious Clarissa, writing "Teatime for Clarissa with Love" on it in red thread, and adding some gingham bows.  The Cosmic Gardner writes poetry.  The 14 Year Old Visigoth that is my youngest son has found and been inspired by the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe - we are sensitive, feeling types and we take our expressiveness seriously.  We have been reading books that are not on your average Bognor Bookshelf - we have been reading Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell.  

And now, because of that, we in the Multiple Bognor Art Movements have had an invitation to tea with Gertrude Stein herself.  The Bognor Art Movement is going for afternoon tea with Gertrude Stein, and that is that.  I will write of our adventure in the next blog.  Edith may well want to meet us too, but so far she has not said anything. 

Tea is tea is tea.  

(A Bognorisation of  "A rose is a rose is a rose."  One of Gertrude's more intelligable quotes.)