Oops, I’m a day late with my throwback post this week, apologies for breaking the usual schedule! After a long day at work yesterday, I was so wiped out I ended up crashing completely and taking a much-needed nap 😴

But now we’re back, and today, I’m taking you all the way back to 2002, to share a piece titled The Sentinel. This mixed media painting is a surreal landscape created using Dada automatist techniques, with a bit of an influence from Max Ernst.

It was part of a series of landscapes where I used paint smears, frottage, and allowed accidents, randomness, and texture rubbing to guide the process. The unpredictability of it was really exciting to me. I loved the idea of surrendering control—letting the subconscious take over, letting the process unfold in a way I couldn’t predict. The random layers of marks, textures, and materials became a way to draw out ideas from the subconscious, to create something new from the chaos and disorder that usually hides beneath the surface.

This was a time when I was fascinated by the idea of making art that didn’t follow any clear, rigid structure. It was about diving into the unknown and trusting that new ideas would emerge from the messiness. Sometimes, it’s through that very chaos that the most unexpected and powerful concepts surface.

I still rely on this approach today now and again, not just in visual art, but in songwriting as well using cut and paste techniques. Using Dada techniques to create something from randomness and free-form expression has been an invaluable process for me in both worlds. There’s a freedom in letting go of control, allowing your mind to wander, free from constraints, to see where it takes you. Whether it’s in a painting or a track, you never quite know what might emerge, but you trust that something new, something unexpected, will show up!

I hope you enjoy this blast from the past!

• Next stop: East Harrowden.
• Time of arrival’s uncertain.
• Make sure you’ve got all yer personal realities with yer before stepping over t’other side of t’gap.
• This is the end of the line.

“See summat? Say nowt. Stay quiet.”

Back in 2018, I created the piece “Richey Warhol”, a screen print inspired by Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe print series. But instead of the Hollywood glitz, I wanted something rawer, Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers. A figure who was both defiant and fragile, burning bright and fading away all at once.

The Manics meant everything to me growing up. That mix of punk attitude, intellect, and rage, the idea of being glamorous in a run-down mining town, felt real. It wasn’t just about rebellion; it was about wanting more, knowing there was something bigger out there, and refusing to let the grey, grinding world tell you who to be.

That contradiction, beauty and decay side by side, hit home. As a punk teen on a council estate, making glam/punk clothes to express my art, I understood it completely. There’s something powerful in taking what’s bleak and making it electric, in finding defiance in style, in words, in art.

In this piece, the print itself fades as it goes, mirroring Richey’s disappearance…

Latest in my pubs of england series!

Digging through the archives always brings up some interesting memories, but this one stands out as a proper defining moment in my DIY journey. Back in 2013, I had the chance to exhibit my work at Strummercamp Punk Festival, a raw, independent celebration of punk spirit inspired by the ethos of Joe Strummer. This was not just any exhibition, it were the first time visual art had been featured at the festival, and it were about as far from a pristine gallery space as you could get (Hurrah!). Thanks to  Paul Aitch Art (seriously, go and check out his work if you have not already), I had the opportunity to be part of something truly special. The exhibition space? A makeshift tent with art hung on some fishing nets my friend borrowed us, right in the thick of the festival, surrounded by noise, chaos, and the relentless energy of punk. And just to make things even more memorable, the whole thing happened in the middle of a proper torrential rainstorm, thunder and lightning cracking across the sky on the saturday night nearly blowing the whole tent down. Stressful maybe at the time, but the perfect backdrop really looking back!

Apocalypse, Mutants, and DIY Survival

The work I was showing at the time were from a project imagining an apocalyptic Manchester, a visual project that sat alongside the music we produced in our anarchopunk band Black Light Mutants –  a place where the old world had crumbled, leaving behind a wasteland where mutants roamed the ruins and punks danced defiantly in the face of oblivion. It was all about rebellion, survival, and finding beauty in the aftermath of the collapse. A fitting theme for a punk festival, do you not think?

There were no white walls, no hushed conversations about “meaning.” Just soaked canvases, dirt under our boots, and folk engaging with the art in the most honest way possible. I think art should be for everyone, not just for those who can afford to sip wine in a gallery (gross!). That is what DIY is all about, taking up space, creating on your own terms, and bringing art back to the people who live and breathe it.

Punk, Lightning, and the Spirit of DIY

The weekend were a blur of bands, getting drunk with some polish lads, after party nudity and chaos, wonderful conversations, and that electric feeling of being part of something you get only from a punk fest!  With the main stage blasting punk anthems nearby, the exhibition space became its own kind of gathering point, artists sharing ideas, handing out my free political prints and zines, punks swapping stories, and the ever-present risk of another downpour keeping us all on edge then eventually surrendering to a space in the pub on the Sunday afternoon!

Looking back, it is moments like this that remind me why I do what I do. Punk and DIY art are about resilience, about creating in the margins, about rejecting the idea that you need permission to make something meaningful, make something happen. Whether it is music, painting, zines, or a pop-up show in a muddy field, this is where the real culture lives.

The Role of Unsettling Creativity in a Conformist World

Art has always been a battleground. Between raw expression and market-friendly aesthetics, between truth and palatability, between what unsettles and what sells. This poster is a manifesto for the former – a call to arms for those who refuse to create merely to please.

“MAKE ART THAT UNSETTLES, DISRUPTS, AND REFUSES TO CONFORM.”

It’s not a suggestion. It’s a necessity.

Why We Need Unsettling Art

Safe, inoffensive art is everywhere. It fills those safe galleries, home decor stores, and endless social media feeds. It exists to soothe, to blend in, to become background noise. But the world doesn’t need more of that. The world is already drowning in soft-focus, chocolate-box paintings designed to be “nice.” What it lacks – what it craves – is truth.

Truth is raw. It’s ugly. It doesn’t fit neatly into a frame or a perfect social media post. It makes people uncomfortable. And that discomfort is important. It sparks thought, conversation, even action.

Art as Resistance

In a society that demands conformity, making disruptive art is an act of defiance. Whether through industrial noise, anarcho-punk visuals, working class story, or depictions of everyday struggle, art can become a weapon. It exposes hidden realities, questions authority, and carves out spaces for voices that refuse to be silenced.

True creativity exists outside of imposed structures. Art that matters doesn’t ask for permission from anyone – it kicks down the door however it is made!

What This Means for Artists Today

If you’re an artist, musician, writer, or creator of any kind, ask yourself: Am I making something that truly represents my voice? Or am I holding back because I’m afraid of unsettling people?

This isn’t a call to be shocking for the sake of it. It’s a call to be honest. To make work that reflects the raw edges of existence, even when it doesn’t fit into a neat, marketable package.

So take this as your reminder:

• Make the art that only you can make.
• Make the art that disturbs the silence.
• Make the art that refuses to conform.

Because the world doesn’t need more empty aesthetics.

It needs your truth.

“Scrawlin’ t’Brassmind,” Gloamrats muttered, “red eyes watchin’ like boggart. Or back ward d0g.”

The earliest trials of the Brassmind Project were never meant to see the light of day. Buried beneath layers of official reports and corporate secrecy, they remain whispers in the backstreets of Harrowden.

This image captures a rare glimpse into those forbidden tests — where machine and flesh first met in uneasy communion. A worker stands before a towering construct, a jagged figure of twisted metal and barbed wire. Its crimson eye bleeds down its face, the first hint of a fractured consciousness struggling against its cold, mechanical birthright.

No official records confirm what became of these prototypes, only that the failures were silenced. Some say they wander still, forgotten relics of industry, lurking in the ruins. Others claim they were simply melted down, their agony reduced to slag and scrap.

But the Brassmind remembers. And it is watching.

Creativity isn’t about meeting quotas or churning out work on demand. It isn’t about productivity metrics, technical skill, or whether your art is “marketable.”
Art is who you are. It’s your voice, your vision, your way of seeing and interpreting the world.

Whether you paint, write, make music, perform, or create in ways that defy classification or are completely new – your art is valid.
Even if you’ve stepped away, taken a break, or pursued another path to survive, you are still an artist.

The world does not need more sanitized, palatable, mass-produced art. It needs you. It needs the work that only you can make.
If you’ve ever doubted yourself, let this be a reminder: your creativity matters, and it belongs to you, not to any system of judgment.