Tenacity
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Oil on canvas
914 × 609mm
36 × 24 inches
Completed 2025
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This amazing writer published a book back in 1988.
After six months, a large bookstore said it had sold 3 copies, two were to the same person.
The publisher cut the author free, cancelled the contract but let him keep the copyright to the book.
The author was 41 and, in his own words, desperate.
He did not lose faith in his book, instead he started again, and found a new publisher.
Finally, it started to sell in his native Brazil.
8 months later an American in Brazil wanted to translate the book and help the author find a publisher in the United States.
The initial launch in the US was also soft, until Bill Clinton was seen with a copy, then Madonna then Will Smith, then it spread to the universities and suddenly everyone was talking about it.
The book hit the New York Times bestseller list, and stayed there for 300 weeks!
It has since been translated into more than 80 languages and sold over 65 million copies.
So thank you Paulo Coelho for sticking with The Alchemist!
The gorilla needs a little time out too
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Oil on canvas
30 × 40cm
Completed 2025
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Sometimes you don’t want to think too much, sometimes you don’t want to wreck your brain working on something that will take months to finish, sometimes you don’t want to get too close to the details.
Sometimes you just want to put some music on and paint something for fun…
Sometimes the gorilla needs a little time out too
Something You Have To Deal With
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Oil on canvas
762 × 762mm
30 × 30 inches
Completed 2025
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I never, ever, thought I’d be painting Keith Richards.
I had been working on another painting about the subjective experience of music. This painting had a spin off where I started looking into what other artists had said about certain topics.
It turns out Keith can be quite philosophical about the creation of art. He once said ‘money is something that you have to deal with, but it should never be the driver of creativity’.
Allow yourself to be surprised
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Oil on canvas
914 × 610mm
36 × 24 inches
Completed 2025
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Allow yourself to be surprised by the process - Rick Rubin
I’ve been working on a large oil painting about music and the experience it brings to humans (or do humans bring experience to music?). Through the process I have taken a step back every now and again to paint some of the people that inspired me to start the original painting in the first place. As it turns out, that process has been surprisingly fun.
Rick Rubin is the producer behind more amazing music than Mozart (yes, I just said that). He’s not exactly a man in the shadows, but he does not seek the recognition of rockstars either. He’s certainly an insightful and interesting person worthy of a canvas.