Me, a sceptic? I hope you have proof.

The aim of this blog is to share with you my passion for Art and Scepticism.  Now these subjects aren’t the easiest to combine to produce something engaging and interesting, but it’s an ongoing process for me and I’ve had a blast producing such work over the past year. This is probably the one that I think works best. All the elements fell into place and the medium of using a book to present the work was perfect.

Our brief centred around the word ‘belonging’ and what it meant to us.  I struggled to begin with because I didn’t really feel I belonged to anything in particular. But I am always an advocate for science and scepticism, and that seemed like a cool, and honest angle to work from. After a lot of research, I began to think back to the 12 year old me who was absolutely obsessed with everything paranormal. Ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, you name it, and it hit me how equally passionate I was back then towards the complete opposite of what I’m into now. Artistically, it seemed like a far more interesting road to take this project down, so I ended up combining these two worlds and presenting them in a little Artist’s book. Two separate worlds  that at differing times in my life I truly felt like I belonged to. The end result is a little rough around the edges and I think I’d like to expand on it and maybe end up having it professionally bound. I had the best time making it and I hope you like it.

‘Bigfoot’, as seen in the famous Patterson-Gimlin film. This was always an image that scared the bejesus out of me when I was little.

Voyager 1 is now the farthest man-made object from earth and is well on it’s way to reaching interstellar space. Which is rather awesome.

I wondered how the hell I was going to portray ghosts, but I found these amazing Victorian ghost photographs which were all the rage back then. Obviously absurd, but they do have this very creepy quality to them, and I love the guy’s reaction in the bottom left picture…’ZOMG! GHOST!!11!”

20th July 1969. Man sets foot on the Moon….’nuff said.

Earth vs The Flying Saucers!

In 1990, Voyager 1 took a photograph of Earth that showed it as no more than a few pixels from it’s vantage point at the edge of the solar system. The Scientist and Astronomer Carl Sagan had pushed for the photograph to be taken, having in mind the magnitude of seeing such an image of our home planet. Carl is one of my all time heroes, his love and enthusiasm for science is a continued inspiration. The above is an extract from his book, The Pale Blue Dot, which you can hear him reading in this truly life-affirming clip…… it never fails to make me smile. (plus, it has a Mogwai song playing in the background….don’t say I’m not good to you!)