The epochal and transforming convulsions in the shape of our world is causing ruptures in civilization. The ice flows are breaking up, the earths plates are shifting and clutching together to form something new. But what is happening to us? History is being re-written.
Read MoreMarcelle Hanselaar Open Letter /
I feel about your work, that you are engaged in a healthy relationship with your demons, you control them and they bend to your will as the puppet master of the whole affair.
Do you feel connected to your unconscious? Not in the Freudian sense but in the emotional sense, do you feel these pictures come from inside you, beyond just your imagination or picture making. I don't just mean the quirky dark stuff but the portraits, the silence of your subjects when they are alone in thought, I feel there are speaking a lot in their silence, perhaps in the Lucian Freudian sense.
David Hockney: All the World’s a Stage /
'Well, I'm not that interested in the theatre itself,' David Hockney said in 1970. 'I did one play. I designed Ubu Roi. When I was doing that, I suddenly realised that a theatrical device in painting is quite different to a theatrical device in theatre.' He added, 'I'm really not interested in theatre design or anything.'
Read MoreHOWARD HODGKIN & Robert Natkin by Peter Fuller /
Howard Hodgkin died earlier this year, he was perhaps the most prominent abstract artist to come out of Britain. The American painter Robert Natkin, a lesser known abstract expressionist and the one American painter my father Peter Fuller chose to champion. Studying Abstract Expressionism at the moment for the development of a new film project, though I never naturally gravitated to abstraction in my own aesthetic. I find it strange Natkin is often left out of the dialogue as his paintings are so beautiful. This article, first published in Modern Painters in 1988, remains a tribute to all three men. At this time Peter was exploring spiritual and transcendental ideas, establishing a new religious order out of art. Abstraction usually pushed reimagining of the natural world too far out even for Peter's line of thinking, but he accepted the challenge when it came to these two men, Natkin in particular.
Read MoreADRIAN BERG BY PETER FULLER /
"That day we met at the front door of the house and he said, 'I'm writing art criticism for a magazine', and I replied, 'You can write on me. I've a show'. Although he was living in a room on the floor below my studio looking out on the same view so that he would be familiar with the subject, I could not have expected anything to come of it. He was just down from Cambridge. The year was 1968. When I had a retrospective in Rochdale, he took the trouble to see it, and to get that organ of the new puritanism Art Monthly eventually to publish his review. I have been able to attribute the opposition of all other critics to his support. While I was a first of sorts for him, he was a one and only." - Adrian Berg
Read MoreOmens II /
The search for beauty is so often underpinned by a rugged brutality, stringent, uncompromising quest to prevail, exclusivity, a climb, a struggle, a ruthless clawing at the flimsy veins of the existence which pretend and shelter. One begins to claw, because of a feeling of not knowing, or of knowledge that there must be more.
Read MoreMaggi Hambling /
In Minotaur Surprised while Eating of 1986-7 the beast, half-man, half-animal, is shown devouring a joint of human flesh, morsels of which hang down from his bovine jaw. He glances out at us with a look of apprehension in his piercing eyes, which seem as human as his hands.
Read MoreOmens I /
In many ways this story begins last September, at the San Diego International Film Festival where the rag tag bunch of renegades that are the Road To The Well crew, scrambled through the streets of San Diego from our screenings of obscure indie dramas to the Oscar hopefuls in Lion, and a special preview of Hidden Figures. It was a handful of studio backed mega dramas versus the new wave of young penniless independent filmmakers trying to complete against the majors with empty pockets, David & Goliath.
Read MoreFunisophical Dances With Films Interview w Film Snobbery /
This Funisophical interview with Film Snobbery at Dances With Films for Road To The Well
Road To The Well wins at Long Beach Indie & the Q&A /
Watching DeNiro's brutally vulnerable monster staggering with understanding and determined to pursue his creator to the ends of the earth, I received a text from the director Jon Cvack with the brilliant news the Road To The Well won the top prize of Best Of The Fest at the Long Beach Indie Film Festival. This film has gone from strength to strength on the festival circuit since it's premier at Dances With Films, since it has been accepted into a number of major film festivals and up for awards competition in all of them including San Diego Film Festival coming up. All this was not without the blood and sweat of all involved, stitched together by the unlikely leadership of Jon Cvack. It was brilliant to get the five of us Jon, Micah, Marshall, Tim and I all in the same room for the Q&A at Long Beach for fifteen minutes or so we had the floor and the stories of forging this dark little monster began to spill out of our respective laboratories of memory.
Read MoreLong Beach Indie Film Festival: ROAD TO THE WELL /
The last time I was in Long Beach I was on route to Catalina to join my mother as she searched for inspiration for her latest series of paintings amongst the coastal life of Catalina. Perspective is a very important part of her work so we went up in helicopter to search for whales and then underneath the surface in a submarine to see the fishes, then out on a boat to search for sea lions. Painting as with acting begins with a stimulus which grows into its manifested form with time and cultivation. Though that stimulus is qualitative and its cultivation must be considered to produce a great work of art.
Read MoreLONDONS CALLING: Freudian Dreams /
"To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself" if this old adage of John Berger's from Ways Of Seeing is true, then Lucian Freud's subjects are certainly Naked. And all that space that exists with the naked form before a dissecting eye, masterfully encouraged where in all that grotesque interchange does beauty exist. There is an undercurrent of danger and spontaneity when a person is naked in the presence of another.
Read MoreLONDONS CALLING: RAW BACON /
Why do we find sexuality a taboo subject in our culture? It is what creates life and yet can be a destructive force for many, a primordial unity for others and for all there is an element of sacrifice. The French call it La Petite Mort (The Little Death), Marcelle Hanselaar's series of etchings by this name have been were an early influence on me. I feel much of life comes down to this tiny demise, figurative painting by the London School in particular Bacon and Freud capture this so well.
Read MoreSan Diego Int'l Film Festival: ROAD TO THE WELL - Day 1 /
I'm writing this post from the road to San Diego from Los Angeles as we tear down the highway to make it on time to the Opening Night film and after party to the San Diego International Film Festival where our film ROAD TO THE WELL is screening twice as part of the Official Narrative Competition.
Read MoreLondon Calling at The Getty Museum: Introduction /
London Calling at the The Getty Museum feels not only like a significant moment in my life but in the cultural life of this city, everything I've loved about art since I was a boy crossing the pond from London to Los Angeles, perhaps I'm in the right city after all. This exhibition not only marks a legacy of masterpieces painted within our time but for me it sheds light on the growing ecosystem of brilliant artists working in Los Angeles emerging just below the mainstream, who uphold this legacy for the next generation.
Read MoreHollywood North Film Festival & Unreasonable Passions /
Having had incredibly passionate beliefs of my own, that at the time of my having them felt overwhelmingly real, especially when in the grips of a character. It’s like my entire world gets reframed, but I love that feeling, I’ve become addicted to it over time. A kind of violent self destruction of my own identity that’s I’ve come to love. But I don't know that growing up and accepting the way things are is a kind of inevitably, because I don't think everyone comes to the same conclusions.
Read MoreDances With Films: Death, Pleasure & Friendship /
This is much the same problem that Hamlet wrestles with, just before this clip I was talking about the comparisons between Classical theatre and American cinema. Apparently soon after this I was also talking about whether or not to commit suicide, "To Be or not To Be" made sense at the time. My meaning was the existential/nihilistic questions being posed in the characters journey, discussions between myself and the director Jon Cvack were focused on the way that Satre or Camus would take on such problems. Camus believed the only real philosophical question worth asking was wether or not to commit suicide.
Read MoreRoad To The Well premier @ Dances With Films Festival & the subjectivity of research /
Today the announcement came out that Road To The Well will be premiering at TLC Chinese Theatre as part of Dances With Films. I reflected on the first moment I was offered the part, and preparing to play an American for a full feature. I think it would have been impossible if I hadn't lived in Los Angeles for three years prior to shooting, I considered the subjectivity of research. Much like the difference between academia and spiritual experience.
Read MoreSkin In Water & Rebels at Newport Beach Film Festival /
The week leading up to Newport Beach Film Festival I was looking at purchasing some art with my friend Matthew Crowley, we were steeped in exhibitions, print auctions and discussions about the political economy of art. I directed Mattie in a play in London called "Things We Want" in the year before I moved to Los Angels and his performance was brilliant, we went for the spontaneous and the ambiguous, jumped out the window when it came to a fixed position, much like my approach to life in general.
Read MoreAustralia /
I went out to Australia to seek rejuvenation and new lands within myself. The trip back got me thinking about the nature of identity, as I reconnected with old friends and reinstated myself within the family unit again I noticed my Australian accent getting stronger, old phrases coming back into my vocabulary. All these things made me reconsider the nature of craft, as a separate theory from the human animal impossible. Belief is not a digested 'system' that lies dormant once learnt, but something that grows and shifts with the person.