My blog has moved…. I am not a very technical person and the internet is a thing, that to a great extent, baffles me. The reason for this second move is a technical one neither of the other sites support these various widgets and gadgets that are deemed essential! Also the look of the blog has changed and I would like to thank Laurie Sanders of BVS for creating the theme. I hope you will continue to follow the blog at it’s new home. See you on the other side! 🙂
I’m currently busy with preparations for my forthcoming open studio exhibition later this month. I love throwing open the studio, meeting people and chatting about art and writing is always a pleasure but these events are preceded by a fair degree of running about getting ready! 🙂 I will be exhibiting a wide variety of my artwork; paintings, pencil work, pastel life drawings and life castings along with my books, prints and art cards.
Patiently Waiting by Richard Savage
This time I am joined by photographer, Rob Morris, who will be exhibiting some of his photgraphic work.
Image by Rob Morris
And mixed media artist, Marian Savill, will be exhibiting some of her unique assemblage jewellery.
Video tape choker by Marian Savill
We kick off on Friday, 21st October with a cheese and wine preview evening from 5pm til 9pm, please come along if you can. Rob, Marian and I will all be here to chat about our work and generally have a good time time meeting folk! 🙂 Over the weekend, we’re open from 11am til 3pm both days, I will be working on some life casts, an interesting process to see in action. Marian will also be working on jewellery pieces in the studio over the weekend, she creates her pieces from recycled materials and found objects and it’s always interesting to see her at work. It should be a fun weekend all round, I look forward to seeing some of you there. 🙂
What is it with the mobile phone? I feel a rant coming on…
Before I start, I am not a Luddite; I do see the benefits of mobile phones. I see the benefits of being in contact, I think the new Hi-Tec phones are fantastic, handheld internet access, the apps and all the bells and whistles.
That having been said, are we so important that we have to be on call 24/7? I speak from a rather old fashioned point of view… I have a rather old mobile phone that people look down on me for when I use it. It only makes calls, it has no camera, no internet, it is just a phone and I use it to make calls. Some folk seem to have it permanently stuck to their hand and I find it a little odd and it seems to be getting worse. There was a man prosecuted for making a phone call while driving, nothing unusual in that, but in his other hand he was texting somebody else. Absolutely crazy. A lady who does some cleaning for us, I regularly see texting or making a call while on her bicycle. In the pub I see people unable to turn the bloody things off, they sit at the bar staring at the little screen, people pass jokes and obscene video clips barely talking. I have seen people break of a meal to take calls, or text while eating. I dare say there is a section of people that while sat on the toilet have replaced the traditional paperback book or newspaper with their mobile phone. Is this just me or is this close to insanity? Are we so important that we can’t be separated from the rest of the world for an instance? I would like to propose the motion that we all unplug…… just for a little while… when down the pub, enjoy a meal and a glass of wine or as radical as this sounds… start a conversation?
….that is the question!
It is funny the conversations you can have when you are not expecting them. A day or so ago the Black Velvet Seductions CEO, Laurie Sanders, were talking on the subject of book covers. One of her new writers, Nadia Nautalia, is in the process of writing a series of romantic erotic short stories, on the subject of domestic discipline with a western theme. We talked generally about the subject, apparently cowboys are hot but so are a lot of other types…policemen…business men… the cover we discussed will be a generic cover for the whole series and I will share it with you as soon as it is drawn
The conversation progressed and Laurie told me she is looking for high quality domestic discipline, short stories with a STRONG ROMANTIC FOCUS. I emphasise romance as she publishes erotic romance. The word count should be 3,500 words and above. Think in terms of your hero being a powerful man, cowboys, policemen, business men, who spank their wives or girlfriends. Spankings should in the end benefit the relationship in some way.
I mention this as I know there are romance writers that follow me here and it would be a great opportunity for you if you are wanting to get your work out there. If you have a domestic discipline story in you, contact Laurie.
A recent blog comment sparked this line of thought. The thought was about my time on hospital and pirate radio. The guy making the comment was Neil, an old friend from hospital radio. I remember Neil’s shows well, it was along the same lines of Jack Jackson and Adrian Juste. Comparing Neil with these two in no way takes anything away anything from him, I loved his shows, I would say he is one of the most talented guys I ever worked with. You can see pictures of some of my old mates here and the home page is here. And this is where you can hear the new Radio Fairfield content on line. I had about five or six years playing with radio in various forms and I have to say I loved it. In a less restricted form I was invited to join a pirate radio station and that was a lot of fun. From time to time the lads threaten to fire up the transmitter and do another show… but sadly it hasn’t happened.. or at least they didn’t tell me about it….. my time with New Town Radio was a lot of fun too. I did look to see if there was an on line presence for NTR but sadly nothing there. A great bunch of guys, Richard, Chris, Steve and Rat-nose, were the core of our happy band. So happy times….. ohhhhh yes, such happy memories.
I really wanted to go into full time broadcasting but sadly the BBC seemed to think they could get along just nicely without my help.. but still it is an itch I haven’t fully scratched.
I think it is true to say that most people don’t take a lot of notice if things of interest that are on your door step and at the age of 49 I thought it was about time to go and see the Tower of London. A chunk of wanting to go was brought about by seeing the clips below on YouTube, but the rest came from my love of history. Learning about history had nothing to do with school. I still have nightmares about some of our teachers. The English teachers were without doubt the worst… and as a dyslectic many of my driving forces come from the misery inflicted upon me. It would not take a lot to get me going on this subject so I will leave my bygone abysmal English teachers alone for the moment and address the state of history taught at my school. I had three years on the Romans. “What did the Romans ever do for us??” I am sure it is a very interesting period of time, yet the Romans alone made for a very dull three years. On the up side I reckon I could still build a fair Roman road, or if not build it I could sure as heck draw it! After school I discovered joy of history, the Peninsular War of the 1800’s, post Roman, Saxon England, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, not to mention two world wars and the space race.
So it was with a keen sense of history, we went to William the Conqueror’s castle, the White Tower. The Tower of London is…. impressive, it covers a fair sized area, must do a seperate blog about it, so much of our history is tied up there, royal executions, an impressive head count quite literally! The royal armoury was impressive too, a statistic that struck me… the purchase of a suit of armour then is the equivalent of buying a Learjet today…
Do feel free to read more about the Tower of London or you could click on the links below they amused the heck out of me! I put some of this out in a previous newsletter. I hope you find it entertaining. The tour is in parts: one, two, three and four.
If you could make a deal with the devil…would you??
The Faustian Pact by Richard Savage
This is a question I have asked myself and it is a concept I have used for artistic inspiration for a lot of years now. In a nutshell, Faust sells his soul to the devil, in return the devil gives Faust back his youth, unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. There have been many stories, artistic works and operas, that elaborate on and reinvent this basic theme but as I see it the basic concept is there The “Faustian Pact”, an arrangement in which any ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success. I think it would be fair to say I am a driven sort of person and I have considered what I would do to succeed in my various enterprises. Would I make that deal with the devil?
Success is a difficult thing to measure, is it the cash you amass? Is it the trinkets with which you feather your nest? Is it the accolades and trophies we collect? The adoration of fans? Praise from your contemporaries? All or none of the above? Is it really that important?
Ultimately I think you have to be happy within yourself, ultimately Faust became dissatisfied with all he had, he yearned for “more than earthly meat and drink”. I would be interested in your take on this and it will also be this month’s newsletter question. What would you do to succeed? Would you make a deal with the devil? If you’d like to receive my monthly newsletter, you can sign up here.
As for me.. it was a done deal many years ago……
Evelyn's Temptation by Richard Savage
The reason for my chuntering on about jeans is that this morning, looking down at my bleach splashed, torn, raggy at the bottom, paint splattered jeans, I thought what ever happened to the whole concept of buying a brand new pair of jeans and slowly and methodically wearing them out? When I was buying jeans the other week it struck me that you can buy worn out jeans saving you the hassle of doing it for yourself. Genius move! And who are the jeans intended for? Poor down and outs who need a cheap pair of jeans? Nope! They are for the middle to high end of the market… well, I have to say it amused the hell out of me. If I had come home as a kid with torn jeans my mum would have either patched them or thrown them out. In fact, Emma and Ken, a couple I was having a drink with the other night told me just that, a friend had her designer slashed jeans sewn up by her grandmother. It is probably my age but I don’t get the whole idea of buying old distressed clothing.
While I am on the subject of things I don’t understand and jeans, here’s another… I realise I do sound like an old fart but what is it with young men not pulling their jeans up to display their pants? I know Calvin Klein make underpants, but why show them off?? As a kid showing your pants was either a shaming way of making you not forget your games kit, under the threat of having to play in your pants, or it was a an accidental thing that invited someone to give you a “wedgie” so again I just don’t get it. I do however invite comments and enlightenment.
After the Feast, pencil on Bristol Board
My latest pencil study is “After the Feast”. I have always loved pencil drawings, regardless of subject matter. As soon as I finish a picture I invariably ask myself the question, “Why don’t I do more pencil work?” Though to be fair I say the same after a break from watercolour, oils, or for that matter sculpture. A lot of my life revolves around the idea of not having enough hours in a day to do what I want to do. At 49 I am sort of resigned to that being the case for the foreseeable future. “After the Feast” was an idea I came across that just fired me up, I can’t really say exactly why, but it grabbed me as a subject. When I work the title comes with the inspiration for the work. The title “After the Feast” came to me from the rather haunting lyrics from an old Eagles track, Hotel California. “In the Master’s chamber, they gather for the feast, they stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast” the image speaks to me, of people sated from a time of excess, I leave it to the viewer as to what the excess may have been.
I know I don’t blog as often as I should. But is it a bad thing? I do wonder if I witter on, or should it be twitter on, a bit too much. I have never been much of a diary writer, I much prefer doing things than retrospectively writing about things that I have done. I guess the main thing is I don’t find myself that interesting. It has always struck me that I am a bit boring, being rather obsessed by both art and writing. I do other things of course, I love fiddling with my Bonsai trees, of which I have about thirty mainly deciduous English oak, ash, chestnut and sycamore. I also love to cook, but nothing quite grips me like art and writing. So is being obsessed a bad thing? I don’t know…. It is, at least, who I am….
Richard Savage
Erotic artist & author
The Erotic Art of Richard Savage 