#greece

A series of portraits of people and local customs that I drew while traveling in Greece this summer. I enjoy the slow pace of life that you’re forced to embrace when you travel to foreign countries. Something I seem to forget when immersed in the buzziness and busyness of a metropolis. Here is a glimpse of a town that tastes of ancient and tradition where time has stopped and people are infectiously happy.

September 2013, Greek port

LINEA 52 // Venice April 2013

                                                                 Mirror Mirror

                                                                  Can't Komplaint

 'Where is Burano, hon? I have to wee'

These are some more sketches I did while on the move on Venetian 'vaporettos'. Tourists always offer an endless source of inspiration for carnivalesque depictions of human behaviours. This week I'd like to share a quote of one of my favourite writers Roberto Bolano:

'Coincidence, if you'll permit the smile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures.'

Freccia Bianca // Series of Sketches I made on Italian trains

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."
Robert Louis Stevenson

Nina's Illustrated Diary // 24/02 Sunday Restlessness

Let's Not Talk About Flags

Glass Home

Feedback Forms // And The Record Goes On

'To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.' B. Chatwin

It's Sunday and there's a bland plan. I only know I'm eager to see something inspiring and not lieing in bed. I try to get to The Light Show at The Hayward Gallery to find out it's sold out for the day. I have no willingness to dive into the Sunday Tate business, so I pay a short visit to The Photographers' Gallery instead. It is a cozy and welcoming space that often hosts the highly conceptual work of upcoming photographers, that I wonder whether they are playing around the illusion of the photographic medium, or with the hopeless illusion of making sense. The photographs on display are nevertheless dry and beautiful. I'd like to see something more powerful and moving but that's a lot to expect on a gloomy Sunday afternoon. I enter the reassuring environment of a London Sunday type cafe. There is a fakely familiar and uninspiring atmosphere, permeated with the sounds of laptops tapping. A very few people are talking to each other, yet sharing the same tables. At least they are serving large warm cups of Fair Trade Colombian coffee. I take a deep breath and a sip of exotic...I feel restless once again.

Windows into American Lives // 3

A life in transit I ask myself what would that feel like. Would I in that circumstance rather be still? I wonder. Through transitory windows of American lives, I steal stills of intimacy of exotic lives. I was thinking about Gauguin this morning. Was he brave or coward? I wonder. I enjoy romanticising the sinful life of the artist/traveller who chooses a purer existence away from Facebook and Twitter.  I could sit down under a palm tree with him, staring at a Tahitian sunset while sipping cheap whiskey. I still wouldn't see the water's edge that separates me from the Seven Seas but I'd be smiling.

This morning I wrote a song called Sailors & Heroes. The chorus goes

// Don't waste your time searching for one, he might not come // he might not come. 

Sailors and heroes also have down times, they lie awake without a brake, thinking of pirates and lives to save // Sailors and heroes, don't wait for one // don't wait for one // he might never come.

NEW YORK TIMES SKETCHES // 2.

ON THE TRAIN TO DIA:BEACON

Keeping a visual record of people I meet and places I see, makes me feel as if I were a journalist and was meant to prove to some very important people that what I saw was actually true and not imagined, and who I met was human and not a ghost. If Robert Frank didn't have a camera, I wonder if he'd still capture glimpses of Americans' lives through pen and paper. I'll never find out as he's dead and as he did have a camera. If I was Robert Frank and I owned a camera though, I'd still use my brush pen and thousands of Moleskine's sketchbooks to draw what I see. It's a practice similar to a sort of automatic writing that reminds me that I exist and what I see is real. Almost 

Sketches from New York times, November 2012

PORK CHOP IS THE FIRST DOG ON EARTH I DON'T DISLIKE

JAY or MR B BELL

DINER BLUES

“Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.” 

Paul Auster, City of Glass

New Ceramic Work For Sale!

Boogie Woogie # 1

Life Is Not Always Fair

I am working on a series of new designs for unique hand crafted ceramic pieces and these are a few samples. If you are interested in purchasing some get in touch and I can send them directly to your home. 

Merry Christmas!

'Let's Cook!' a film by Irene Fuga

Over the past week I have been working on the editing of this short film, alongside wonderful animator Thomas Hicks. I was commissioned to make a drawing for an exclusive event and talk by Ferran Adria, by upcoming company Epicurely. It's been the first time I had been drawing on a large scale black wall and it's been great fun. The black surface seems to somehow keep away the anxieties provoked by the white blank page!

Mural I did for Epicurely // A Visit from Ferran Adria

Some Live Illustration I did for an exclusive event where Ferran Adria was invited to have an intimate talk for a few privileged ones, organised by Epicurely. An honour making some artwork to welcome one of the world's cousine heroes. A short film I made about the process will be uploaded soon. You can have some more info about the day following the link below

http://blog.epicurely.com/




 

MOKITA // THE SENTIMENTAL GENE // AN ILLUSTRATION SYMPOSIUM

  // Rob Ryan //

 // Jonny Hannah //

An engaging debate on how illustration can move beyond a subordinate practice and decorativeness and how it can effectively tell us something about the world. Rethinking about illustration as a visual language that can have a powerful impact and make a statement or embrace a view point. Illustration as a storytelling tool for both personal and socio/cultural stories. The engaging concept that linked the speakers throughout the day was the topic of sentimentality and how this affects illustrators of present and past times. It's been a refreshing privilege having a selected range of practitioners talking about their personal experience and the reality of the ever changing business and realm of illustration. Looking forward to see the next chapter coming together!

Some illustrations I did for the October issue of British Vogue!

I really enjoyed working on these illustrations for the October issue of British Vogue. That's how Andy Warhol got started anyway...

Group Show: Le Metamorfosi del Viaggiatore, Oct 18 - Dec 2

Hello. One of my travelogues is going to be exhibited in a group show Le Metamorfosi del Viaggiatore in Milan from October the 18th until the 2nd of December 2012. Details of the private view and gallery venue to be found following the link below

http://ai-lunchbreak.blogspot.it/2012/09/inaugurazione-mostra-le-metamorfosi-del.html

If you're in Milan on the 18th come along to have a look at the traveling sketchbooks/drawings/notes of a selection of international artists and illustrators

Paris (Texas?)

  “Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that corpses have been sitting there for weeks, statuesque. All this time the cafe has been unattended, for sure. Just how long have they been sitting here, petrified like this?” 

from 'Of Walking In Ice: Munich-Paris,11/23 to 12/14, 1974'
Werner Herzog

The Ostrich Project # 1

'My drawings are the result of my sculpture'
Auguste Rodin

Work in progress: new ceramic pieces!

Illustrations for The World of Interiors, August issue 2012

Morock 'n Roll

Woken up by the squealing voices of love-making cats echoing in the empty alleyways, the North African sun overflows through the tiny windows at around 6 am and yet, I don't feel tired.

“Another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”

Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky