Let there be life

 

 

My message to my fellow artists for the New Year is, Let there be life! 

Let there be no slavishly copying from photographs. 

Let there be no social media censoring of the nude.

Let there be no carefully contrived compositions.

Let there be no constraints. 

Let there be no erasing. 

The painting above was made at 3.00am in a Leeds night club, and the painting below was made from life on a beach in the Virgin Islands. It is one of hundreds of illustrations in my book Notes on the Nude. No photograph, no censoring, no constraints.