The b-uncut blog

b-Loud: Jasmine Ronel: Paint with Passion

// March 17th, 2010 // View Comments // b-loud

Israel-based Jasmine has created a diverse body of work incorporating photography, printing, painting and drawing, using a variety of media. The work has a graphical influence but her techniques and processes give each image a gripping tactility. The subjects are always brewed in a mass of worked textures, layers, tender colour and present emotion. Her carved compositions follow three core themes: woman, flower and abstraction. To better understand this talented artist, read on.

b-Loud!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

When I was 3 years old, I took a decision to be a painter. The very first artwork of mine as an ‘artist to be’ was “an angry flower”, 1973, Gouache on paper, 30×20 cm.

b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why?

b-Quick!

b-Loud: Annett E Bank: alive, boundless, divine

// February 2nd, 2010 // View Comments // b-loud

This week b-uncut caught up with British artist Annett E. Bank.

Bank, a painter, lives and works in Brighton. Her work is both abstract and figurative. As she puts it, “one is not confined to one’s physical form alone, instead we are connected to all that is.”  Her philosophy can be seen in her art: female figures float and drift in a sea of color, often disappearing into their surroundings. Bank has exhibited at the UK’s Best Graduates Show, Salon Gallery (London), Cambridge Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair in London & Brussels. She is currently preparing for a solo show at the New Steine Hotel in Brighton throughout May 2010. Read on to find out more about this fabulous artist!

b-Loud!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

AEB: A very early piece from 2001 was a charcoal and pencil drawing called ‘Awakening’ which encompasses all that is still present in my current work- namely vibrant physicality, sensitivity and sensuality within the human form. The composition was so successful that it has been re-used as a template ever since.

b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why?

AEB: I love them all in a way as they speak to me about aesthetics, perfection, meditation, spirituality and poetry. I learn from them. They tell me about a particular feeling of holistic wellbeing. I consider it an artistic relationship and it makes the work genuine and memorable in my eyes. I am grateful for each one as I see people get completely captivated by their visual appeal.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

AEB: Most recently I returned to working in oil on canvas again. I adore the fabulous qualities of that medium with which you can create those wonderful rich and sculptural effects. Oil is perfect for impasto application and pliable in designing different shades. I work very intuitively with a focus on spontaneous, highly dynamic pattern in order to create images of graceful living and contemplative beauty. I think there are enough ugly things in this world and so I see it as my responsibility to take care of that side of society and contribute to make it a little more enjoyable. I never experience such a thing as ‘fear of destroying’ the painting even whilst being very experimental and bold in my approach. I think this physical involvement with the design process produces authentic art that captures the imagination of the viewer, which I consider my challenge. In the past I have almost exclusively used unusual liquid paints and pigments in combination with other mixed media – and felt very comfortable with that method too. Essentially, I want my paintings to portrait a certain aspect of what it means to be alive- to have boundless energy, sensitivity, passion, awareness and enjoyment of one’s own body.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

AEB: Determination, personal strength, an irrepressible urge for self-expression, individuality and independence, an unwavering trust in my talent, and a total love for everything I do.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

AEB: The divine creative spirit who governs all. But apart from that: a life coach, many progressive thinkers, philosophers and writers, fellow students, my friends and my family.

b-uncut: Your work is vibrant and spiritual, and much of it focuses on the female form. Does your work reflect your personal life, does it define you?

AEB: With any creative person it is imperative to acknowledge the connection between the artwork and their personality. I discovered that nothing in life is separate – my paintings cannot be what I am not and so, of course they are a close part of me. I see them as transformational, inspiring and uplifting…the same characteristics that I wish to develop in my personal life. I would say that my gut feeling has shown me the way to paint – long before I was aware of different concepts such as spirituality, human potential movement, postmodern society, or the influence of a hidden agenda for our well being. I believe the world is changing and will be marked by men who are more subtle, and women, who are more powerful, so that there will be balance in the end. The female element in my work is therefore not by accident. In my opinion is the feminine principle on the rise and I feel contemporary art is a great way to express that esoteric tendency.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

AEB: Alex Grey, Joel Peter Witkin, Lucien Freud, Rex Church, Francis Bacon

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?

AEB: I don’t swear.

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?

AEB: compassion / unreliability

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?

AEB: it takes me far too long to compose articles and publications

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?

AEB: to live a sensible life

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?

AEB: I’ve got all the power I need

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?

AEB: I am not into celebrities, but I like to meet Alex Collier

b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview?

AEB: Where are you from?

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..

One month? Selling all the pieces that I currently have in exhibitions

One year? Moving into a new studio/home in the countryside

One decade? Still selling artwork that people appreciate

b-Loud: Simone Boscolo: past meets present

// January 26th, 2010 // View Comments // b-loud

The artist in the spotlight this week is Italian appropriation photographer Simone Boscolo. Boscolo lives and works out of Milan and creates  work that is “research between memory and oblivion inspired by the history theories of Walter Benjamin and others.” His work is ephemeral and hauntingly familiar. Using images from the past the artist manipulates his medium, superimposing his own emotions, fears, and hopes on the photographs through his unique technique. b-uncut caught up with this talented illustrator turned artist for the scoop on his inspiration:

b-Loud!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

SB: My first artwork was “Famiglia Deluca di Pozza di Fassa” (Deluca family from Pozza di Fassa), three years ago (2007).

b-uncut: Describe the one you love the most—why?

SB: My first, ‘cause in this work there are the aesthetic directions that I’ve tried to develop in all my works including my last work’s series.  However it’s difficult for me to love my works after too much time. When I finish a work I feel that it’s not mine anymore and when I see what I have done I see all the things I could do to make it better…

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

SB: It’s hard to talk about your own work because the picture is always incomplete. First of all I have to find a narrative starting point, then equally important is the choice of the pictures on which I plan to work. I get inspiration from historical and social changes that took place during the 2oth century, and more specifically within the context of a 2oth century Italian–very complex, controversial, and with the point of view often being one of countrymen. I work on survivals, on unsolved tangles of a sort of “historic unconscious,” or resistance in loss and persistence in loss deriving from changes that began in the 19th century and accelerated during the 20th. This was the century that produced junk and dizzy dreams destined to fail.

I have found in Walter Benjamin’s “Angelus Novus” a good starting point to channel this research. All this trying to set aside unjustified nostalgia and regret. I think that from my pictures emerges a kind of obsession for death but I believe  this belongs somehow to the dynamics or to the origin of the creative process. I also need a “soundtrack” when I’m working and it becomes part of the same creative process. Generally I work listening to Arvo Pärt, Fauré, Schubert, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Die Form or sacred music from 17^th and 18^th century. The soundtrack is vital for me.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

SB: Some years working as an illustrator and three years as an artist. It’s a very short time and this has been a long way to walk.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

SB: The Art-Director of the gallery in which my works are in permanent exhibition (Galleria Zamenhof in Milan). Until three years ago I was an illustrator only. He suggested me to try to find an artistic way for my projects. And I have tried to do it.  Also my family try to support me and, over all, my wife that believes in what I do. Sometimes more than I do.

b-uncut: Do you consider your personal and professional life one and the same? Does your art define you, or do you define your art?

SB: This is a complex question. I can answer that what I do in the way I do is what I love to do.  It is a basic part of me. I must do it. But the artistic way is only a part of the symbolic representation codes through which I try to define the world and my role in it. I can affirm that in many ways my art can define myself, my perception of life, history, society, my personal fears and obsessions, my expectations, mistakes and illusions too. My “Weltanschauung” in other words. Perhaps art is the final product of every side of my life but I don’t live my life like an artwork.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

SB: Well, these fives could be it (not only painters or visual artists): Joel Peter Witkin, Peter Bruegel “the Elder”,  Jorge Luis Borges,  James Ensor  and Werner Herzog or Pier Paolo Pasolini (not very fun party indeed! I think I will also include five porno-actresses…)

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?

SB: I have a latin motto: “Nomina sunt consequentia rerum.”

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?

SB: It’s not a quality (I think) but in others I’m attracted by their contradictions. And I love the ones who can take themselves and their life with a touch (or a lot) of irony. Too much seriousness is not for me. But normally I don’t ask too much of other people. They are not born to entertain me and I’m not born to entertain them.

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?

SB: A lot on the same level: like a human being I’m irremediably unreliable, often lazy, with a tendency towards selfishness and reasonably vicious.

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?

SB: My mother desired for me safe employment like every good mom but…

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?

SB: ESP powers…

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?

SB: No one, it is a very dangerous thing.

b-uncut: Your least favorite interview question?

SB: All good questions, really.

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..

One month? In Milan to finish the second and the third part of my Emanuele Gudester’s series.

One year? In Milan with some good exhibition and some more money (I hope).

One decade? I hope to be alive…and if it will be I should like to live with my wife in a cottage on the Hebrides, in Scotland, and, honestly, with a solid artistic career (not only in Scotland, obviously).

b-Loud: Joanna DROPDEAD–16 going on Tracey Emin

// January 20th, 2010 // View Comments // b-loud

16 year old Joanna “DROPDEAD” is an “artist, photographer, writer, singer, musician, mechanic and computer nerd” living and going to school in New York City. It was her passion for music (at the age of 6 she was in a band called ‘Hello Gorgeous’ that is currently still together) that led her to the visual arts, another outlet to bare her emotions. Joanna’s approach is straight and raw. Her work pulses with honesty and directness.  No commercial concerns impinge on her message and  b-uncut glimpses traces of a young Tracy Emin. “DROPDEAD”  is an artist to watch…

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

JD: I believe I was around eight or nine years old and my art teacher decided to do “cave paintings” on dry wall from her re-done bathroom. I got so into the project and finished with my dry wall cave painting of a wolf on a mountain. This of course was probably not my first experience with art, but it was the first time I was truly proud of my work.

b-uncut: Describe the one you love the most—why?

JD: Unique, different, adventurous, creative, curious, accepting, intelligent, understanding, someone that I can rely on to always see right through me, that can view past the cover and flip through the pages. I think I’ve always wanted someone to see me for a unique person, for a personality unlike others out there. Most people see me as a “freak” a “weirdo” and instead of trying to discover who I am, they label me as what they want me to be.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

JD: I’m not a method person. I’m not into rules and step-by-step operations. I’m a completely free thinker and my creativity blooms from that. Anything can give me inspiration. The world is such a beautiful place. There is music everywhere, in the air, the trees, in the city, in people; everywhere you go there is music, but only for those who choose to listen.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

JD: Everything takes time, for me it has been my whole life. From the beginning of 2009 to the end I have been completely content with my life. I am passionate about my art, my relationship with others, my music, and my career. So it has taken me long, but the receiving product has been worth waiting for.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

JD: I have been in a whirlpool of different people in my life, and the people who have truly helped me the most have been the people I have recently met. There have been few in my life that I can count on and trust, so most of my help has been self-given, but those who have helped me will forever be my friends.

b-uncut: Your work acutely reflects the fears, anxieties and frustrations of teenage life. It is raw, fresh, and in a word—cool. As a young artist, how do you see your style progressing as your work matures?

JD: My Artwork has always been about getting the chaos or the insanity of what you are feeling and ripping it out to lay it upon the page. It’s my insanity, my chaos, my eccentric self, and I think the main thing about my art is to challenge people. I want to challenge people to see things through different eyes, to feel the pain or the happiness that someone else may feel. It also focuses much on being trapped in a place where you feel alone, like you are a flower in a field of buds. I want my artwork to grow, what artist doesn’t? But I would love to see it still challenge people, and hopefully inspire people.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

JD: Picasso is the ultimate, his work is inspiring in so many ways, he was unique and his blunt way of painting the truth was beautiful in a sense. Megan Cedro is one of my role models, she is an amazing artist and she is so young. Her talent amazes me and I would love to be like her when I grow older. Oscar Wilde, his art was more reflected in his words then in a canvas, but he is such an amazing person and I use him as a model for myself. He was unafraid of being himself and I greatly look upon that as an act of bravery. Mozart, because of his success and intelligence is such a grand accomplishment at such a young age he is truly an inspiration. Then finally, Beethoven, because he poured his soul and entirety into his work, his devotion was so grand that he went deaf.

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?

JD: I would have to say this is definitely F#!k, you can use it with anything and it’ll just make any insult more interesting.

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?

JD: I hate stupidity, so I find intelligence attractive.

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?

JD: I would have to say this that I rush into things to quickly.

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?

JD: “Don’t run on the ice.” BAM I fell.

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?

JD: I wish I could fly, that would be amazing.

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?

JD: Everyone says that I resemble Demi Lovato in personality and in appearance and I would really like to meet her just to see if it’s true.

b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview?

JD: I’m a pretty open person, I don’t like when people try to get in depth into my life and things like that.

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…

One month? Studio Art class building up on my portfolio.

One year? Taking a million new classes to improve on my portfolio.

One decade? In my first home in New York City, in a small but reasonably nice apartment, managing my own art gallery, still in an amazing relationship with my only love Connor, with two dachshunds one named Bruce and the other name is still pending.

b-loud: Robert Anderson–Artist and Wordsmith

// December 10th, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

This week b-uncut has caught up with Scottish artist Robert Anderson: painter, poet, and writer. A multi-talented artist, Anderson is probably best known for his illustration style art. A Carpenter by trade, he is now a full time mid-career artist and poet. In fact, he classifies himself as a “poet with artistic expression” as all of his artwork stems from a poem he has written–it is an extension to his spoken word. His quick wit and quirky sense of humor are sure signs of his creative genius!

The b-you interview:

b-uncut: What was your first artwork?

RA: My first artwork was probably me if I am to go with a story my mum told me. She was having a piano delivered and placed me in my cot with my potty, so I did a number 2 in the potty then placed it over my head. When my mum noticed me, she said, “you really are a work of art Bobby?”

b-uncut: Describe the one you like the most-why?

RA: Probably, “Spills From The Hour Glass” It just depicts for me this apocalyptic course we as man kind are heading into. The turmoil created to an infestation through greed and survival of the fittest. I am disgusted by the mind of human kind.

b-uncut: Describe the one you hate the most-why?

RA: I don’t hate, I don’t know how to hate. I made an Easter, “boiled egg” for my daughters school competition using wires and bolts so it looked like one of the little, “Cadbury’s instant potato mash” aliens from the advert. She left it in her room and it fell over and smashed, and all these maggots spilled out. Well I must have jumped on every one of those little suckers…….eh? But I never hated them.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

RA: Three eggs and a bag of flour, ha, ha! A lot of long hours and persistence, constantly believing in myself and keeping my work real. Whether this upset others or not. As long as I stayed true to myself and my art I knew I could do no wrong. I don’t work for commercial gain. For money I paint football stars and pets, GRRRR! This allows me to fund my realist art. The things I want to do. This art is my mind and sanity.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

RA: Nobody, I have and never will ask for help. Everything I do comes from what was installed from the womb. I live in my own little bubble. I have never had a lesson in my life. It just seems to have always been there waiting to come out. Now it just flows endlessly.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

RA: The scope of my world I suppose. If I see something that hurts on T.V. Or hear of some injustice then I paint and write about it. As I said, I try to keep everything as real and as close to the bone as possible. I also do this with fun things. I am not all doom and gloom, rather to the contrary, I am a very happy go lucky person.

b-uncut: If I ask you to describe your art, would it be redundant to describe yourself?

RA: My art is me, my mind and pain, my laughter and love, my illness of thought
I constantly strive in endless hours to keep it that way.

The b-quick interview

b-uncut: The swear word you like the most?

RA: Politician

b-uncut: The flaws a man/woman should have to seduce you?

RA: I love a woman that can’t cook, or pretends she can’t so I can show off my culinary skills. ha, ha!

b-uncut: Your parents’ advice you shouldn’t have followed?

RA: Well my mum always said, “It is not the coughing your coughing, but the coffin your carried off in” So I started smoking. Another one was, “If you fall out that tree and break your legs, don’t come running to me?” Yip, that was my mum.

b-uncut: The talent you wouldn’t want to have?

RA: That’s a hard one? I suppose knitting, I hate that bloody endless clicking sound like a metronome on high speed.

b-uncut: The person you’d like to be hated by?

RA: Dr David Starkey, He wrote terrible things about Scotland. So I wrote a poem about him once and he hates me for it. I love him hating me, the little English four eyed, bum buffing wimp. But I don’t hate him, ha, ha! I am falling of my seat in laughter here.

b-uncut: The question I should never ask you?

RA: Will you do another interview? Ha, ha! “kidding”

When was the last time you changed your underwear? Because I wont tell you. I will tell you however that I am not hungry as I ate a plate of corn flakes three Wednesdays ago. Am I evading the question here?

The b-where interview

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…

5 seconds?

RA: Sitting here staring into empty matter

5 minutes?

RA: Making a coffee

5 days?

RA: Sitting here writing, or in my bubble painting.

5 months?

RA: Florida to see my girl

5 centuries?

RA: Sitting in heaven as a wise old man with my girl at my side,
looking at statues built in Dr David Starkey’s name, I can send some pigeons down.

The Should Would Could Interview:

b-uncut: Do we know you?

RA: You should , we had sex, was it that bad?

b-uncut: Should we know you?

RA: Not if your pregnant, ha, ha!
You should know me through the truth I try to write

b-uncut: Will we know you?

Yes as I am going nowhere. Watch this space?
Cheers from Scotland everyone xxxxxxxx Bobby

b-loud: Carolyn Jordan–With a Wink and a Smile

// December 3rd, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

Meet British born artist Carolyn Jordan, a figurative and expressionist painter currently living and working in Provence. Carolyn’s art has a strong mediterranean influence and her accomplished draughtsmanship belies the underlying solitude of people, whether alone or in groups, facing the inevitability of their lives. She is a widely acclaimed artist, having exhibited her work internationally. We caught up with her this week:

“Born in Suffolk, educated in London at the Lyçée Français de Londres, then private schools in England and Switzerland, Carolyn Jordan won a scholarship to study at St. Martin’s School of Art.  An allergy to sewing led her to spend more time in the life class than in the workroom and the following year she left England for France. Her portraits are rugged, realistic and uncompromising in their individuality.”
( Extract from The Osborne Gallery public relations, Grosvenor Street London WI – 1986)

“Probing, analytical portraits painted with a gritty ‘clin d’oeil’ (wink) that never leave the viewer indifferent.”
(Extract from ‘The London Portrait’.)

She has since shown at major galleries in London, Paris, the U.S. and been interviewed by Arte (French TV), France Culture (French radio), La Rai (Italian TV). Her works have appeared in many art journals and magazines across the world.

b-uncut: what was your first artwork?

CJ: The first artwork I remember was a painting I did of a circus for an art competition in a national newspaper that to my joy, I won. From then on there was no looking back. Although to my knowledge the work is not hanging on any museum wall my path was set in stone.

b-uncut: your favorite artwork?

CJ: Usually the latest because I feel I’ve moved on.

b-uncut: your most “hated” artwork?

CJ: Sometimes the latest one month later because I’m not certain I have!

b-uncut: what did it take to make it to where you are now? and who helped you along the way?

CJ: Blood, sweat and tears!  I was a rebel daughter to very formal and disapproving parents. Mother preferred boys but to her dismay gave birth to two girls!  I was expected to marry well – the ‘Season’ was, and still is an upper class invention akin to a marriage market from which  I ran away (still a minor)  to France, only to fall into the clutches of my ex-husband who continued the tradition of forbidding me to paint – only a little more violently. So it wasn’t till three children and one divorce later that I was, at last, able to PAINT !

I owe an undying debt of gratitude to my old friend and mentor, Jaro Hilbert who was never complacent in his criticism but who egged me on relentlessly. His confidence in my future as a painter, in spite of my ups and downs and the added difficulty of being the single Mother of three small children, gave me the impetus I needed at that time.

b-uncut: what are your methods? Your inspirations?

CJ: My inspirations are the human condition. My methods? as for a stage setting, or choreography, choosing the people I wish to represent then sometimes ‘placing’ them in a very different environment that may be in total contrast to their lives but I think the notion of solitude is omnipresent. My chaos series is a more journalistic approach to the gratuitous violence that threatens our civilisation and anger towards complacency.

I believe the personality of an artist will nearly always be there in the paintings – there has to be sincerity in art. I cannot find any sincerity in the so called works of art pushed down our throats and glorified by clueless and cynical art market  profiteers calling themselves ‘experts’!  Marcel Duchamps and Brit-Art have a lot to answer for…

b-uncut: the swear word you like the most ?

CJ: I haven’t made a decision yet but anything with a lot of hard consonants sounds satisfying.

b-uncut: the flaws you find most seductive in a man?

CJ: Oh, a man with no flaws at all – I will make up the difference for two.

b-uncut: the parental advice you didn’t follow?

CJ: In our family there was no advice – just commands that I did my best to disobey.

b-uncut: your least welcome talent?

CJ: getting too good on my computer – I already spend too much time on it and it takes me away from my work.

b-uncut: the person you’d like to be hated by ?

CJ: I’d hate to be hated by anyone – if there’s someone out there who does, I don’t want to know !

b-uncut: where do you see yourself in…

5 seconds?

CJ:Still trying to answer your questions.

5 minutes?

CJ:May have finished so back to my studio at last.

5 days?

CJ: Watching the sale of one of my paintings at auction and trying not to think of all the ridiculous things I’ve said in this interview!

5 months?

CJ: Hoping I don’t catch this infernal flu so I can go on painting

5 centuries?

CJ: If we haven’t succeeded in blowing ourselves up – hanging on museum walls of course.

Do we know you….Through my works, a bit perhaps but I look nothing like my paintings so people are thrown off course when they meet me.

Should we know you….I prefer to be known for my work. Even being photographed at my own shows (or being interviewed) brings me out in spots – I would prefer to be invisible.

Will we know you…. That depends on you – I am not very sociable.

b-loud:Thomas Hodges – Shock or Art

// November 24th, 2009 // View Comments // b-loud

Thomas is a former financial engineer (investment banker) and part-time fashion photographer, who turned full-time photographic artist back in 2002. Award winning and now internationally acclaimed, he is a “mid-career” artist. He founded the art movement “Imaginism” back in December 2006, to embrace his artistic style. Thomas specialises in the art-nude and erotic-nude genres.

He wants his images to capture the beauty of the female form or an architectural monument.  You will see (or not see) as much (or as little) as you desire. The viewer’s imagination is primarily the key to the interpretation of his work.

We think its beautiful stuff – erotic yes – shock not. Thomas explains his philosophy, “Erotic, Erotica, Erotism, Eroticism, etc., all pertain to the root word “Eros”, Son and lover of Aphrodite (or Venus to the Romans), and all pertain to “sexual desire or excitement”. Erotica is (or at least should be) primarily sensual, sensuality being the primary stimulant.  Erotica to me is “sensual stimulation, arousing sexual excitement”. Thomas recently experimented with erotic art and animation. So what do you think – erotic art, art, or visual shock?

We got him to give us a few minutes for our interview.

The b-you interview

b-uncut: What was your first artwork?
Hodges: No idea in honesty, I just can’t remember !  Probably the series “Nude-Shadows”.

b-uncut: your favorite artwork?
Hodges: “Romantica”, it is the perfect example of what my work stands for, i.e. imagination, female sensuality and sexuality.

b-uncut:your most “hated” artwork?
Hodges: I don’t “hate” any of my works, otherwise I would not create them!

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
Hodges: Blood, sweat and tears !

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
Hodges: Many people, but not least of all my wife and muse Chu Chiao Wang.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
Hodges: My inspirations are all around me, but primarily women and female sexuality, which are my fundamental inspirations.

b-uncut: If I ask you to describe your art, would it be redundant to describe yourself?
Hodges: No, my art and myself are intertwined.  My art is me and I am my art!

The b-quick interview

b-uncut: Favorite swear word?
Hodges: Merde!

b-uncut:  the most seductive human flaw?
Hodges: Vulnerability.

b-uncut:  parental advice you shouldn’t have followed?
Hodges: I didn’t follow any of their advice!

b-uncut: Your least desirable talent?
Hodges: Can’t think of one off-hand!

b-uncut: proud to be hated by.
Hodges: I’d rather be loved by all, hated by none, although that of course I know to be unrealistic!

b-uncut: The question we should never ask?
Hodges: You already have J

The b-where interview

Where do you see yourself in…

5 seconds?……. Still sitting in the Café-Bar typing!

5 minutes?…….. STILL sitting in this Café-Bar typing!!

5 days?……. Rome, maybe London, maybe Paris.

5 months? …….Working on my solo exhibitions and my designs.

5 centuries? ………That’s a few creative lives on

The Shoulda Woulda Coulda Interview

Do we know you: Of course you do J

Should we know you: Of course you should J

Will we know you: Absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever!