Check out London-born artist Robert Brad­ford’s recycled toy sculptures…

Robert cre­ates these life-size sculp­tures from, mainly, dis­carded plastic toys.

Related art­icles:

• Coulson Macleod Loves Shauna Richardson
• Coulson Macleod Loves Ann Carrington
• Coulson Macleod Loves Stephen Cox

Another trip down memory lane for me as I remem­ber another artist from my past. This time it’s…

I knew Ann when she was study­ing at the Royal Col­lege of Art, doing her MA (Sculp­ture). My par­ents, at that time, owned a shop and were always keen on sup­port­ing stu­dent artists. They asked the RCA if any of their stu­dents would be inter­ested in cre­at­ing a tem­por­ary art install­a­tion for their store. And Ann was. Her very first com­mis­sioned work. As a way of thank you, Ann cre­ated this art­work for them…

Ann has since gone on to become a high-profile artist and I see her work fea­tur­ing reg­u­larly in magazines. When she gradu­ated from the RCA, Paul Smith bought up half her degree show. Doesn’t get much bet­ter than that, does it?

Her ‘Pearly Queen’ (pic­tured below), made of mother-of-pearl but­tons, is owned by Elton John.

I emailed Ann the other day, to just say hi. She says that she sees our typo­graphic art around a lot too. She advised my par­ents to hang on to their one-off Ann Car­ring­ton piece as it may be worth a for­tune one day, then joked that then she’d ask for it back.

Related art­icles:

Coulson Macleod Loves Stephen Cox

I was flick­ing through Saturday’s Tele­graph magazine (with a barely recog­niz­able Phil Collins on the cover) and stopped abruptly at the art­icle fea­tur­ing the Paris apart­ment of Clé­mence and Didier Krzentowski.

The Krzentowskis are dir­ect­ors of Parisian fur­niture store and art gal­lery, Galerie Kreo.

And on their wall of their apart­ment that looks out over the Eif­fel Tower is a simple piece of typo­graphic art­work by guer­illa ban­ner artist Marc-Antoine Léval. In red let­ter­ing it reads “Please, Fran­cois Pin­ault, Buy My Work”.

But who’s François Pin­ault? And why is he so important?

• He’s super-rich
• He’s French.
• He owns one of the biggest col­lec­tions of con­tem­por­ary art worldwide.

He also owns…

• Gucci
• Yves Saint-Laurent
• Bot­tega Veneta
• Ser­gio Rossi
• Boucheron
• Stella McCart­ney
• Alex­an­der McQueen
• Balen­ciaga
• the French première league foot­ball team
• Stade Ren­nais Foot­ball Club
• Théâtre Marigny in Paris

And he controls…

• Château-Latour vine­yard
• news magazine Le Point
• daily news­pa­per l’Agefi
• the auc­tion house Christie’s

You see, he really is super rich.

At the Venice Bien­nale last year, at the open­ing of Pinault’s latest art gal­lery Punta della Dogana, Marc-Antoine hung a giant ban­ner sus­pen­ded from a palazzo across the canal, which read, ‘PLEASE, FRANCOIS PINAULT, BUY MY WORK.’

So what’s this got to do with Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art I hear you cry?

Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

Related art­icles: The Rich and Fam­ous Buy Coulson Macleod

For the eagle-eyed among you, you will have noticed that we have two new prints in our ‘Noise’ col­lec­tion. The first is ‘The Beatles’…

Lim­ited edi­tion canvas-mounted art print by Coulson Macleod

And the second is ‘The Rolling Stones’…

Lim­ited edi­tion canvas-mounted art print by Coulson Macleod

Little con­fes­sion time. Our two new prints have actu­ally replaced two. ‘The Pix­ies’ and ‘The Vel­vet Under­ground’. Why? Erm… well… *whis­per* they were not that popular.

Could have lied and said they had sold out. But that’s lying and we don’t lie. And of course the whole reason for our blog is to record the ups and downs of Coulson Macleod.

There is no point keep­ing them if they don’t sell. They are a rem­nant of the first days of Coulson Macleod, when Coulson used to design things just for him­self. He loves The Pix­ies. And he loves The Vel­vet Under­ground. But clearly not every­one shares his enthusiasm.

And to quote The Beatles, it really is a ‘long and wind­ing road’.

Thought I’d just tot up where in the world we’ve shipped our art to. So aside from the UK, Coulson Macleod prints now hang in homes in the fol­low­ing countries…

Aus­tralia, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, India, Ire­land, Italy, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emir­ates, and of course from the east to west coast of the USA.

How very, very cool!

Our latest col­lec­tion, ‘Winter Trees’ is now online to buy at Coulson Macleod

‘Thick Blows My Frosty Breath Abroad’

‘Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind’

‘The Roar of Trees and Crack of Branches’

‘Freeze, Freeze Thou Bit­ter Sky’

We’ve hand­made the frame and pan­elled back­board from reclaimed antique Vic­torian roof tim­bers, the same tim­bers that we use for our ‘Zodiac’ frames, because they are just so gor­geous. The planks all vary in size, so no piece is identical.

We then hand paint the boards and over-print it with dis­tressed image and typography.

‘Winter Trees’ is unlim­ited in print quantity.

Last night Coulson Macleod went to the open­ing night of Open 10, the annual open con­tem­por­ary art show that is being held in Kettering’s beau­ti­ful Alfred East Art Gal­lery.

We per­used the 83 selec­ted art­works, nat­ur­ally admir­ing some more than oth­ers, sip­ping our glass of wine. A jolly lovely way to spend an evening.

We blogged about Open 10 last week when we found out that one of our art­works ‘The Six­ties’ had been selec­ted to exhibit and we men­tioned some other artists who had also been selec­ted. So here are few more names to check out (again I can only point you to the artists who have a web­site, and you’d be sur­prised just how many don’t)…

Joanne Archer, Stella Ben­ford, Roger Brad­ley, Craig Bridge­ford, Paul Bursnall, Andree Fletcher, Sarah Kay, Brian Mut­ton, Emma Raby, and War­ren Shaw .

Open 10 is now open to the gen­eral pub­lic and closes on 19^th June. So if you hap­pen to be in the area do pop in and check out the local tal­ent and maybe pick up a piece of con­tem­por­ary art.

Came across the work of Ohio-based artist Mark Lan­gan who cre­ates superb art from cor­rug­ated card.

Mark recre­ates some great cor­por­ate logos…

You can con­tact Mark to request him to cre­ate your com­pany logo too. I’m think­ing a Coulson Macleod logo would look pretty good!

Coulson Macleod’s answer =

Coulson Macleod vintage-style, oak-framed print from the Love collection

Coulson Macleod canvases are prin­ted using pig­men­ted inks that are UV stable and sealed with UV pro­tect­ing var­nish and, if looked after cor­rectly, will last for many years. Typ­ic­ally this can be in excess of 75 to 100 years.

Here are a few sug­ges­tions to help you to look after your canvas.

• Avoid hand­ling as much as pos­sible to pre­vent scuffs and scratching.

• Avoid dis­play­ing in dir­ect sun­light. Although UV stable inks and var­nish are used, dir­ect sun­light will reduce the lifespan of your canvas.

• Avoid dis­play­ing your can­vas in areas of extreme and fluc­tu­at­ing tem­per­at­ures and humidity.

• Never clean using a damp cloth, solvents, or clean­ing fluids.

• Should dust settle on your can­vas then remove with a feather duster or use a soft brush to wipe while using a vacuum. Do not let the vacuum nozzle touch the can­vas surface.

• Avoid con­tact with mois­ture. Should any mois­ture come in con­tact with your can­vas then dab gently with a dry, lint-free, cloth to remove and avoid wip­ing and rubbing.

• Can­vas is a nat­ural product and will stretch over time. Your can­vas will be framed onto high-quality double-laminated kiln-dried stretcher bars. Should your can­vas appear to sag, these enable you to re-tension your can­vas by care­fully tap­ping the wedges.

a Coulson Macleod can­vas artwork