Solstice greetings

22nd July 2021
Ok, gonna hit you up with another of my 'Subtle Vandal' paintings. As I previously mentioned this is a series of up-cycled paintings I did during the pandemic to cheer myself up. Most of them are oil paintings that have been in bargain baskets, a few are reworked prints, most of them are funny, some are rude, and some are not for the delicate natured. You have been warned!
Today's oil painting is medium sized , (not like the huge painting of dogs I posted the day before yesterday). This painting was in pretty good condition but a bit dirty. The subject matter was not very inspiring, which is why I guess it had been for sale for so long. A painting of an old Dorsety style sleepy village circa 1940's. This made me think of all the men folk being away at war and how popular the postmen were. I decided to introduce a postman into the painting and a bored housewife who was missing her husband, but once again it would be a little subtle addition. All I had to do now was to give the repainted area an acrylic varnish so it blended in with the original and give it a new name. Yes. So it is now called 'The Postman Always Comes Twice' by Subtle Vandal. The pics below are of the before, after and close-up detail. P.s. this series will be available in signed prints :-)
                                    
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21st June 2021

It's been a while since I last blogged, so I thought I'd update you on some of the projects I've been doing. I am always spinning a lot of plates art wise and think I'll start with showing you a body of work I've been doing to amuse myself during the pandemic. A lot of the work I've done in the past has been to address major injustices in the world, but I've been feeling so fed up with the status quo recently I decided to just make myself laugh. In 1996 I did an oil painting called 'The Sleeping Gypsy 1996' in response to the Criminal Justice act, where I copied Henri Rousseau's painting and added a relevant new twist to it, I will post a pic of my painting in the comments. Other artists have done great works whereby they have taken original paintings and then added their twist on them. Check out Banksy's Crude Oils, Gnarled Branch's up-cycled paintings, and more recently the fabulous Mason Storm exhibition at The Stowe Gallery. I decided that if I were to up-cycle paintings I would have to put my own twist on them. I wanted to add something to them; but still keep it in the original style, so it would have to be very subtle. I picked up this large painting of a pretty woman with two dogs at a knock down price but the canvas was badly scratched, going quite deeply in one spot. I cleaned the painting and set about repairing it. There were a couple of things I didn't like in the original. The dog on the left hand side had funny feet , so I corrected them slightly. The tall white flower behind the woman stood out too much , so I 'knocked it back' with a darker cream shade. The frame was wobbly so I re-pinned it, it has a few knocks but I decided I didn't want it to look like a new painting. It was nearly complete I just had to add four egg shaped pink things and name it. Yes. So the painting is now called 'The Dog's B*llocks' by my new moniker Subtle Vandal ...

Sleeping Gypsy 1996 by Lolly Golding