james milroy

Salford Exhibition

2011-06-24T08:47:00.001-07:00

Exhibition at Salford Museum & Art Gallery opened on June 18th and runs until October 2nd so you've got all summer to go and see over 50 of my recent paintings including this one which shows Manchester United and Man City supporters getting together to celebrate a great season...

Washington Green Painters

2011-01-13T10:39:00.001-08:00

My affectionate tribute to some of the Washington Green artists. Here they're all beavering away at their canvases under the benign gaze of their boss, Glyn Washington. Being an artist is such a lonesome business that it's fun to show them all working together...

Building snowmen

2010-11-29T10:44:00.001-08:00

Kids making unusual snow sculptures - and some rude ones. Might make a good Christmas card I'm thinking...

Lowry Exhibition

2010-11-21T08:53:00.001-08:00

Characters from Lowry's paintings are visiting an exhibition of his pictures and maybe even recognising themselves... and somehow a Lowry dog has got loose in the gallery.

Queuing4Lowry

2010-11-08T09:02:00.001-08:00

Continuing with the Lowry theme, here's a crowd of his characters queuing up to have their portraits painted...

PaintingLowrys

2010-10-30T09:54:00.001-07:00

My tribute to L.S.Lowry: a crowd of Lowrys painting Lowrys. Most of his popular paintings are here, but see how many you recognise. It was quite a challenge to paint his little people even smaller so I had to go out and buy a minute brush for this. Hope to show this when I have my exhibition in Salford Art Gallery next summer.

Painting Nudes

2010-10-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Following on from the other painters painting pictures here's my view of art history reduced to a bunch of old blokes painting pictures of nude women. It gives me great pleasure to reproduce all these masterpieces of western art as ugly little blobs of paint - but how many can you recognise...?

More Painters Painting

2010-10-02T07:43:00.001-07:00

Another painting of painters painting. How many artists can you identify? I looked up a list of the most famous artists of the last century and for some reason there are a lot of Americans, and most of them are white males, including Pollock doing one of his drip paintings. But there's also Georgia O'Keefe and Frida Kahlo, Basquiat and Chris Offili. And there's also Damien Hirst watching one of his assistants paint a spot painting for him. He has a studio about a mile from mine where his work is manufactured. Can't imagine ever employing an assistants to paint my paintings but you never know...

Cages of Freedom

2010-09-01T09:51:00.001-07:00

This is a painting I'm donating to the art auction for Amnesty in October. I've always been interested in optical illusions so here I'm combining that with a few figures from the crowd paintings. As with all my work it expresses an ambivalence towards notions of 'freedom'.

Running to the Sun

2010-07-22T02:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a new painting for everyone off on their summer holidays and especially those VolksFolk driving off in search of the sun in their vans and beetles. I've even included Herbie The Love Bug (his number just happens to be the same age as the artist).

Waving Axes

2010-06-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Two new fans added to the painting of England supporters - the coalition chums Nick and Dave waving their axes. Just a reminder that even if we win the World Cup I'm not sure the rest will have much to cheer about with so many cuts round the corner.

2010-05-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Finished working on the allotments this week. Gardening is not my strong point but this one seemed to grow all right. I've been thinking about it for over a year, a painting with no people in it, just for a change. Apart from the scarecrow. Anyway, the earth is very red, like it is in Herefordshire, which contrasts well with the artificial greens, and The Lion Gallery have snapped it up to exhibit next week in Leominster.

Hawthorn Gallery

2010-05-22T07:54:00.001-07:00

The Hawthorn Gallery have just framed up these two paintings. It's not easy to choose frames for my busy images but these are really smart - plain, deep, chunky - and neatly offsetting colours from within the pictures. I recommend all my customers do something similar. http://www.thehawthorngallery.co.uk/

England fans again

2010-05-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

And here's a detail. A few of the fans are wearing unlikely gear like viking helmets with red crosses on, or traditional St George's bikinis. With only 3 weeks until kick off I am now quickly jumping on the world cup bandwagon to produce some merchandise.

England fans

2010-05-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Up at 5am to get on with the painting of England fans. Still working on it at 9pm but getting a bit of RSI. Must stop these painting marathons. Couldn't decide how to mix up the white home and red away kits so instead made the whole crowd into a giant flag, all waving their little flags.

2010-05-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

It felt like winter in Summertown on Saturday. Arctic winds and drizzle almost quenched the street festival, but somehow managed to draw the crowds. There were bands and dancers, a living statue, an accordion player on stilts and kids having their faces painted. As soon as I finished the drawing one of the organisers asked to use it for the poster next year, and then one of the band members bought it off me! Thinking about turning it into a painting...

Punting

2010-05-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

Up at 6am to finish the painting of punting on the Cherwell. Yesterday I had the water too turquoise and too choppy so now it's muddier and flat. A duller painting perhaps but at least true to life whatever that means. Anyway I hope the punters of Oxford enjoy it when it goes on show for Artweeks on Saturday. I'm at Venue 84, 7 Oakthorpe Road. If it's not raining I'll be out on the streets of Summertown in the morning with a large drawing board sketching the people enjoying the festival. See website for more details: www.artweeks.org