Mark I'Anson - artist

[Pete’s Picture Palace]

Sad day today, but life does go on and today I attended an art exhibition in London showcasing the work of a Scottish artist called Mark I'Anson. He lives in North Berwick, which is about as remote as you can find, and often exhibits in Edinburgh, but right now he's opened an exhibition here in London which is open till February 9th. I urge any of you in the South East that if it's at all possible, to please attend - at the John Martin Gallery, 38 Albermarle St, London W1. Find them here:-

https://www.jmlondon.com/exhibitions/mark-ianson/

What he does is get hold of old photos and then paint them in an expressionistic way, and I'll show 5 of them lower down here. He gets some of his footballers from me but also finds political and religious subjects to paint and these are large scale - the footballers below are 51 x 32 ins (130 x 83 cm). In this show there are 12 footballers but I'm only displaying 5 here as I can't remember the names of all the others. Thing is he doesn't let on that they are footballers at all, even though they are often in kit, in this show they are "Disciples" (hence, 12) but footballers they are in all their glory. Here are those 5 (with my watermark for Mark's sake)

Eddie Turnbull (Hibs manager)



Ian Porterfield (Sunderland)



John McPhail (Celtic)



Len Shackleton (Sunderland)



Ronnie Allen (West Bromwich Albion)



One word of warning - these aren't cheap! The Gallery of course takes their large share and if you were interested it would probably make sense to contact him after the show. And I'm sure he does commissions.

Anyway, a bit of a departure for me. Hope you enjoy it.

[Flaming Pie]

Pete, these are very interesting. He’s a very talented man. I wonder was Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley one of the paintings? I know Shankly was painted( not by this artist) , his wife Nessie had it on show hanging over the fireplace. On eBay last year, someone was selling paintings of footballers. The money was going to charity. The artist was the goalie David James. They were not bad. They didn’t sell for a lot of money. Many years ago , l was in The Walker, Liverpool. They had a little shop with bits and pieces. I purchased a bundle of postcards of paintings by modern day artists. Probably about 5p or 10p each. I thought l will never be able to afford their paintings, but l attempted to get these copies signed. l found their addresses in ‘Whose Who’ . Some were returned unsigned, but a lot came back with the artists signature.. , including six from Francis Bacon. I know he was a bit eccentric, but Bacon was obviously a good bloke. He even sent a few extra ones from his own collection of postcards. Others that l can remember were some from Peter Blake and the cartoonist Gerald’s Scarfe. Lucien Freud and Hockney wouldn’t sign them . I few years back l sold them all when l needed the money. I never dreamt that 10p postcards could be worth so much!