In September this year I will be taking part in a charity bike ride raising money for MacMillan Cancer Support.

I believe we all know someone that has been impacted by Cancer. If you think about it……. I am pretty sure you do! Thankfully many survive, however many more don’t and many still live with it. Support for those in need can make such a different at possibly the worst time of their lives.

Personally, I have known friends and colleagues taken away too soon with this dreadful disease. Some far too young, not that age should be a factor. Recently, close family members have battled against it, thankfully successfully. But this disease continues to haunt and never leaves your thoughts. It is at times like this when you realize that we are fortunate enough to have support networks and charities that do such amazing work in helping people during these times.

I have therefore decided to test and torture myself by taking part in a ‘fun’ bike ride across the length of Britain. From the most Southerly point of Lands End in England, to the most Northerly point at John O’Groats in Scotland (mainland). The route takes in roughly 968 miles or 1558 KM of UK roads. Total distance is the equivalent of cycling from London to Le Mans 2.6 times, or to Edinburgh nearly 3 times! 8.3 times round the M25! London to Paris 4.5 times!

And with so many up’s and down’s across the terrain, the total hills climbed will be 52,507 feet or over 16,000 meters…that is the equivalent of nearly 1.8x up Everest.

The ride is over the course of 9 days, so works out to being about 108 miles a day. This will be around 8-10 hours (or more) cycling a day! Each day I will get to base camp, set up my roll mat and sleeping bag, in the hope for a good night sleep in a tent ready to start again the following day.

I have many months of training to come, with many early starts to ensure I get the miles in the saddle! So if you see me walking funny, you know why!

Giving just a little, can make a huge difference. Thank you for any support you can give.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/martyn-rab

To find out more about Macmillan please visit their website on:- http://www.macmillan.org.uk

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I’m really appreciative of your Black History Month posts Jimmy and was inspired to see an Alma Thomas inspired wall in my local YMCA created by the pupils of the local elementary school…

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Really pleased to be invited again to the UAL skills week this week, which is held twice a year and where we are the only external brand participants. Why is this good? Why because it is aimed exclusively at design BA and MA students and gives us a chance to explain the importance of materiality in not just Fine art contexts, but to expand into working with design students and illustrators. This meant that we were able to deliver workshops on drawing for design using Winsor and Newton promarkers, pastels, watercolours and pencils and how this facilitates all areas of design development. This then led to demystifying mediums providing opportunities to bring in Liquitex and the versatility this has to offer in design and mix media. All this was based on discussions around pigments and dyes and the legacy of the brands. It also provided me with the opportunity to talk in more detail than usual on granulation and a chance to show off our (super granulating) cobalt violet, particularly since ours is a single pigment and has always been granular. Good to see the UAL materials course list recommendations manifest themselves in the students own palettes pictured here.

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Today, in Honor of Black History Month, the DEI council showcases Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977) Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: “Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture.”
His portraits are based on photographs of young men whom Wiley sees on the street. He has painted men from Harlem’s 125th Street, as well as the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where he was born. Dressed in street clothes, his models were asked to assume poses from the paintings of Renaissance masters, such as Titian and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Wiley describes his approach as “interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit”. His figurative paintings “quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power”. In this manner, his paintings fuse history and style in a unique and contemporary manner.
Wiley was included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2018.

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