Stories of Hope and Courage

My friend Andy Copps recently invited me to take part in a storytelling event in London, called Stories of Hope and Courage. I was asked to provide some live art to accompany the stories as they unfolded, and there was some live music in the mix too. We gathered to be entertained, and to  support Donate4Refugees, a small charity which provides essential shelter, warmth, food and other critical daily needs of refugees and migrants in Europe. You can find out more about them here. I sat at the back of the room, I listened, and began to draw.

Artist At Work

In the run up to the event I decided to frame my work around the enso symbol, a hand drawn circle symbolising a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. Given I had not heard the stories beforehand, this felt like a useful way to begin each art work. As the stories unfolded, I made an enso and added symbols within each enso to reflect aspects of the tales as they drifted by me on the air. Most of the ideas worked, one or two did not, and ended up in the bin 🙂 After the event I photographed the art works. Here they are in close up, and mounted and framed. 

These original A4 signed art works (unmounted and unframed) are available to purchase at a cost of £25 each plus £5P&P. £10 from each sale will go to Donate4Refugees along with the donations of £105 which were raised on the night. If you’d like to purchase one or more of these works, you can do so via my PayPal page. Thanks in advance for your support.

Visualising Your Work

This morning I gave a talk and facilitated a short workshop on the Art of Leadership for the 2014 Learning Skills Group. I will publish more information on the session soon, but I’m flat out right now and just have time to share some work we cocreated today.

Here is some visual thinking around what the future looks like for learning and development. These images were cocreated by groups of people many of whom had not previously met. They were on a tight time constraint and were encouraged to go for it – and to show their work. I’m really impressed with what the teams came up with in such a short space of time.

If you prefer – you can view the images on Flickr too.

Learning to Paint – Self Portrait

OK, this isn’t a painting, it’s a pencil drawing. It’s a self portrait on an A4 sheet of 180gsm sketch paper drawn using a variety of pencil grades, 3B, B, H and 2H.

OK, this isn’t a painting, it’s a pencil drawing. It’s a self portrait on an A4 sheet of 180gsm sketch paper drawn using a variety of pencil grades, 3B, B, H and 2H. I drew it in a time of pain, both physical and mental, brought on by the death of my Father.

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