Incas and Inklings

Light Industrial Units | 25 x 20 cm | Acrylic on canvas

Been going through my old paintings archive today, trying to get them into some sort of order. Here’s one from 2022 that could also be a Fall song.

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Inkling No. 2

The second edition of Inkling is now out and the first response is in (will share next week). This is my ongoing experiment in print – you can read about the first edition here. I sent out Inkling No. 1 at the end of last year to a small number of people and invited them to send something back. Not necessarily something personal or handmade – literally anything. There’s just something special about receiving a real thing in the post.

I had a succession of surprise deliveries, including a Sewing Susan, a Duchamp deckchair and a dead dung beetle. All the submissions were fed into the bingo-ball machine in my brain and the above poster is what came out.

The starting point for this edition came from Jane Munro, who sent in the above photo – which sent me off down a Valentino rabbit hole.

Women are not in love with me, but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which they paint their dreams. Rudolph Valentino

It felt fitting to make a poster for Hollywood’s original poster boy. And I like the idea of painting my dreams onto canvas – something artists do often without intention.

I chose this brilliantly dramatic still from the film The Sheik (1921) and experimented with drawing directly onto the screen, using screen filler and Mark Resist film to get a range of different marks. I’m pleased with the end product, but the process was definitely a challenge and I got into some serious project creep! This is an edition of 40 hand-printed 6-colour screen-prints. It felt like a lot when I was printing them, but apologies if you didn’t get one – simply didn’t have enough to go round.

Here’s the scene and the transcript:

Lady Diana: Why have you brought me here?

Ahmed: Are you not woman enough to know? Do you know how beautiful you are?

Lady Diana makes a run for it, Ahmed pulls her back.

Ahmed: I am not accustomed to having my orders disobeyed.

Lady Diana: And I am not accustomed to obeying orders.

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Went to a lovely sculpture exhibition held in a front room in Poynton, Cheshire this week and enjoyed this piece, a collaboration between my friend Anna and Rachael Barnes.

Custos and the Wagons by Murrell & Barnes © Anna Riordan

His name is Custos. He is a collector of anything that catches his eye. On his charcoal trike he weaves about on his wheels completely unnoticed in one of his many disguises. He loves nothing more than to pilfer desirable doobies, doohickies, doodads and tut, flinging them into his favourite wagon behind him as he goes. If you've lost anything special...it might be in his wagon.

Custos and the Wagon reminded me of an encounter I had with a strange character on a train in Cusco, Peru nearly twenty years ago. He appeared out of the blue, scurried down the aisle petting a stuffed llama, presented it up close to my face and then tiptoed off again without a word.

I had no idea who or what or why at the time, but I’ve subsequently learned they’re Qhapaq Qolla dancers, representing wealthy merchants and llama caravans from the Inca Empire who for centuries came to Cusco to trade all sorts of highland products in exchange for maize and coca leaves.

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One hundred and ninety-four

There are 194 subscribers to this newsletter.

Monday 13th July is the 194th day of the year. On this day in 1923, the Hollywood sign was officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. Originally intended as an advertisement for a property development, the ‘land’ was dropped in 1949.