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By Robert Good, 25/06/2010 2:15 pm

They say time flies when you’re having fun – well it certainly doesn’t seem like over six months since my last post, when I was just starting out on my MFA adventure. Back in October, I was beginning to get to grips with conceptual art; now, I’m wondering why it took me so long to take the plunge. I love the way in which art can be a vehicle for exploring ideas, relationships and themes. Of course, this can still be done with oil on canvas, and I haven’t stopped painting. But finding and creating objects and placing them in new contexts opens up a whole new vocabulary of exciting possibilities.

So I’ve been using old books as raw materials: sorting, collaging, and photographing them to create new and unexpected combinations. For example, the official history of Sixties pop group The Mamas and The Papas may not at first sight seem to be a natural bedfellow for Samuel Johnson’s eighteenth-century travel journals. But their titles are just made for each other. And so I created ‘Go Where You Wanna Go (A Journey to The Western Islands of Scotland)’ and placed them together on the shelf, allowing me to ask questions about history, culture and all sorts of other things besides.

I’m participating in Cambridge Open Studios again this year, so do call in and take a look for yourself at what I’ve been up to. I’ve got a new series of ‘Splendid’ paintings, plus pictures of my ‘monster’ Flying Spaghetti Monster commission, a brand new ‘Collector’s Corner’ and much else besides. Full details in the Open Studios handbook (available free from CAM and many other Cambridge outlets) and on my website. I hope to see you!

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By Robert Good, 22/10/2009 11:46 am

Well blogger me! I didn’t think I’d be putting pen to blog any time soon, but I have just started a Master of Fine Art postgraduate course at the Anglia Ruskin University: so I thought I’d post an occasional record of my progress(?) there. 

In fact we are covering a lot of theoretical texts – Burke one week, Kant the next – which suits me well, as I like to think that my art work is all about ideas and problems of communication. And it is genuinely useful stuff. When Edmund Burke, writing in the 1700s, analyses ‘the sublime’ he talks about that experience providing us with a jolt – a means of stepping back from our day to day humdrum and taking a fresh look at things. And I think that idea still has legs today. 

So I have created a few small ‘conceptual’ pieces as a result of my studies so far, and you can find them on my website. Really, they are only thought ideas, a bit of raw material that I may some time transfer to a finished piece. I’m also thinking of doing a photomontage as a way of threading my ideas together. 

At the same time, I have been working steadily on a large commission (3.6m high) of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (well worth a Google if you have not come across him/it). This piece is more in my regular painting style. So far we have agreed the designs and I’m working on a colour sketch. Some pics again can be found on my website. 

So things are bubbling along nicely. ‘Watch this space’ to see how everything progresses…

www.robertgood.co.uk