Love is about Change; Love is about Never Changing

The Corn Poppy, Southsea

You may have noticed, you may not, that The Corn Poppy has been quiet lately.  There is a reason. Disillusion.  Existential angst.  I took a step back and wondered why the heck I was doing this.  In the beginning there was a purpose, the first 100 posts were an attempt to answer a question, looking for a definition of Art.  It was quite fun.  As I worked my way  through the question I became more and more enamoured of street art and graffiti.

Morf, Southsea

There came a new purpose.  I take my camera out and take pictures of graffiti for you.  Show you some things you might have otherwise missed. Street art, and more particularly graffiti, is both transient and localised.  Photographers and bloggers help that art to reach a wider audience.  A piece on a subway wall in Smalltown, UK, noticed by few and appreciated by less, could be seen by people all over.  You're welcome.

I went to a street art festival a few weeks ago and took hundreds of pictures.  This will keep the blog going for ages I thought.  But looking through the pictures I questioned why I should post them.  These weren't untutored bursts of expression from idiot savants; these were professional illustrators and art students painting out of doors.   There was some good art but not so much graffiti.  The big pieces, the marquee pieces, were striking, impressive but . . . something was missing.  It was all a bit mainstream.

Even the surrealism that affects much modern graffiti is ordinary. The experimental is now conventional, the experimental is now conventional.  In a world where Donald Trump is a contender for the world's highest public office you have to take surrealism (and satire) to a whole new level.  The conventional is now experimental.

The mainstream and I parted company decades ago.  It was a mutual agreement.  I didn't want to do mainstream and mainstream wanted nothing to do with me.  I didn't want Uncle Walt being the arbiter of my cultural experiences, I didn't want a life soundtracked by the Top 20 (any more), I didn't want my time orderd by tv listings, I didn't want my choices to be made for me by Sunday supplements. So I sailed off my own sweet way.

I could say more but it'll only cause a scrap.