Chris Niblock's Blog, page 5

Featured Painting: ‘Cool Shades’

My original intention when I started this painting was to produce an abstract piece. After working on it for a while however, I decided that the idea wasn’t going anywhere. The vertical blue and whites stripes were suggestive of the ultra violet emitting flourescent tubes used in sunbeds, so I added the figure of a guy wearing sunglasses. I had employed a colour palette from the cooler end of the spectrum and this provided me with a title for the work.

Cool Shades is currently on show along with Cosmic Collision (previously  featured on this blog) until 3rd February at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms gallery, Mill Street, Ludlow SY8 1AZ. Both Paintings are for sale. Cool Shades is priced at £250 and Cosmic Collision at £350. The artworks are painted in oils on good quality, deep profile canvas 60 x 76 cms in size.

Original artworks copyright Chris Niblock

Filed under: art Tagged: Art, art exhibitions, art for sale, Chris Niblock, contemporary artworks, figurative paintings, Ludlow, oil paintings, the male figure, Visual Arts

Featured Painting: 'Cool Shades'

My original intention when I started this painting was to produce an abstract piece. After working on it for a while however, I decided that the idea wasn't going anywhere. The vertical blue and whites stripes were suggestive of the ultra violet emitting flourescent tubes used in sunbeds, so I added the figure of a guy wearing sunglasses. I had employed a colour palette from the cooler end of the spectrum and this provided me with a title for the work.

Cool Shades is currently on show along with Cosmic Collision (previously  featured on this blog) until 3rd February at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms gallery, Mill Street, Ludlow SY8 1AZ. Both Paintings are for sale. Cool Shades is priced at £250 and Cosmic Collision at £350. The artworks are painted in oils on good quality, deep profile canvas 60 x 76 cms in size.

Original artworks copyright Chris Niblock

Filed under: art Tagged: Art, art exhibitions, art for sale, Chris Niblock, contemporary artworks, figurative paintings, Ludlow, oil paintings, the male figure, Visual Arts

They seek him here, they seek him there . . .

A few months ago they said they might have missed it. Now they're claiming they may have glimpsed it. The Higgs Boson particle is proving as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is of course a fictional character: a foppish English aristo who risks his life to save French aristos from the guillotine during the reign of terror, but he does share a number of important characteristics with the Higgs Boson particle.

1) He constantly eludes detection

2) No one is quite sure if he exists or if he is just a myth.

Imagine the Higgs boson was a person rather than a particle. Say a clever and resourceful jewel thief, wanted all over Europe but no one knows for certain who he is or what he looks like. A French professor claiming to have seen him reports his sighting to the local gendarmerie.

'So professor, you say you saw Higgs Boson.'

'Yes. Yes, I did,' the professor replies. The man is red faced and excited and the detective wonders if he has been drinking.

'And where was this professor?'

'It was in the tunnel at Cern.'

The detective leans forward eagerly. He can see the headlines now: Inspector Clouseau - the man who brought Higgs Boson in. 'I need to know when, and more importantly I need a description – what did this man look like?'

The professor looks stricken. He hesitates. 'Well, it was . . . erm, very dark in there. '

'But, you saw him, right?'

'It was more in the nature of a glimpse actually . . . '

'A glimpse! The detective shouts, then in a calmer voice,  'Just how long was he visible for?'

'Well, it 's hard to be absolutely precise about that.' The professor pulls a sheaf of computer printouts from the briefcase he's been clutching, 'If you take a look at these numbers, you can see there's a spike in the data just here . . .'

The detective sighs. 'Thank you professor. I don't think we need detain you any longer.'

Filed under: science/humour Tagged: Cern, Higgs Boson, Inspector Clouseau, Large Hadron Collider, Peter Sellers, Physics, Scarlet Pimpernel, science, The God Particle, The Pink Panther

Featured Painting: Scaramouche Jones

I was inspired to paint this after seeing Pete Postlethwaite perform the role of the eponymous clown in this one man show at Ludlow Assembly Rooms. It's based on a publicity still for the show, but I decided to heighten the drama of the picture by adding a stronger background. Coincidently, a year or so later I found a buyer for the painting at the very same assembly rooms.

Scaramouche, a roguish clown character of the Italian Commedia dell'arte, also features in the popular song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. The name was originally that of a stock character who featured in 17th century Italian farce, in which another regular character named Harlequin would beat him for his bragging and for his cowardice.

Original artwork: oils on canvas copyright Chris Niblock

Filed under: art/drama Tagged: BohemianRhapsody, Clown, Commedia dell'arte, Harlequin, Paintings, Performing Arts, Pete Postlethwaite, Portraits in oils, Queen, Scaramouche Jones

Putin’s Cover Girl

In the year since she was deported from America in the biggest spy swap since the end of the Cold War, Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko: aka Anna Chapman, has gone from undercover spy to pin-up cover girl. On her return to Russia, she was toasted by Putin at a private gathering and invited to join a pro-Putin youth group; her job to provide leadership advice to Russian youth. So far, so good, but then she posed half-naked for a men’s magazine holding a gun. Somewhat surprisingly, this embarrassed the former KGB agent Mr. Putin who has not only posed topless with a gun, but with horses and  a fishing rod.

Then in an incident more reminiscent of a Carry On film than John Le Carre, the Bondski girl took to the catwalk during a fashion show brandishing a pistol, which, much to the delight of her detractors, she proceeded to drop in front of the attendant press corps. Now ‘the spy who came in from the cold’ could find herself back out in it. Given the scanty clothing she’s been wearing lately and with the harsh Moscow winter just around the corner, things could prove very cold indeed for the failed spy.

I don’t know if British Intelligence has someone like Anna working undercover in Moscow but I’m betting her choice of underwear will be far more sensible than Chapman’s: a nice warm thermal vest from M & S and some thick woolly tights. Let’s hope that like the Americans, would be Russian traitors will just love her English accent!

Filed under: life/humour Tagged: Anna Chapman, Bond Girls, femme fatale, John Le Carre, men's magazines, Pin-up girl, The Cold War, The spy who came in from the cold, Vladimir Putin [image error] [image error] [image error]

Putin's Cover Girl

In the year since she was deported from America in the biggest spy swap since the end of the Cold War, Anna Vasil'yevna Kushchyenko: aka Anna Chapman, has gone from undercover spy to pin-up cover girl. On her return to Russia, she was toasted by Putin at a private gathering and invited to join a pro-Putin youth group; her job to provide leadership advice to Russian youth. So far, so good, but then she posed half-naked for a men's magazine holding a gun. Somewhat surprisingly, this embarrassed the former KGB agent Mr. Putin who has not only posed topless with a gun, but with horses and  a fishing rod.

Then in an incident more reminiscent of a Carry On film than John Le Carre, the Bondski girl took to the catwalk during a fashion show brandishing a pistol, which, much to the delight of her detractors, she proceeded to drop in front of the attendant press corps. Now 'the spy who came in from the cold' could find herself back out in it. Given the scanty clothing she's been wearing lately and with the harsh Moscow winter just around the corner, things could prove very cold indeed for the failed spy.

I don't know if British Intelligence has someone like Anna working undercover in Moscow but I'm betting her choice of underwear will be far more sensible than Chapman's: a nice warm thermal vest from M & S and some thick wooly tights. Let's hope that like the Americans, would be Russian traitors will just love her English accent!

Filed under: life/humour Tagged: Anna Chapman, Bond Girls, femme fatale, John Le Carre, men's magazines, Pin-up girl, The Cold War, The spy who came in from the cold, Vladimir Putin [image error] [image error] [image error]

Featured Painting: ‘Cosmic Collision’

This painting was inspired by a still from the movie The Right Stuff. Based on the book of the same name by Tom Wolfe, it tells the story of test pilot Chuck Yeager‘s attempts to break the sound barrier in a rocket powered plane and of  the seven astronauts of NASA’s Project Mercury. The Cold War was at it’s height and America and Russia were locked in the Space Race, the original impetus for which was the desire to build bigger and more powerful intercontinental missiles to carry the atomic warheads they were both stockpiling.

Project Mercury was something of a stop-gap. The Americans had talked of building a small winged vehicle along the lines of what would eventually become the much larger space shuttle, however the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Russians in October 1957 convinced the Americans that the soviets were way ahead of them in terms of lifting power. If they were to put a man into space before the Russians they would have to rely on their existing rocketry. The Mercury spacecraft was basically ‘a man in a can’ which would be shot into space atop a Redstone missile. The original design called for the craft to be ‘flown by wire’ from the team on the ground, but the Mercury astronauts – all test pilots – baulked at this and the capsule was fitted with a manual override.

In the event, the Russians beat them to it when on the 12th April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth. Ten months later  John Glen would become the first American to do the same in the Mercury capsule ‘Freedom 7′.

Original oil painting on canvas copyright Chris Niblock

Filed under: spaceflight/art Tagged: Art, Chuck Yeager, NASA, oil painting, Project Mercury, Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe, United States, Yuri Gagarin

Featured Painting: 'Cosmic Collision'

This painting was inspired by a still from the movie The Right Stuff. Based on the book of the same name by Tom Wolfe, it tells the story of test pilot Chuck Yeager's attempts to break the sound barrier in a rocket powered plane and of  the seven astronauts of NASA's Project Mercury. The Cold War was at it's height and America and Russia were locked in the Space Race, the original impetus for which was the desire to build bigger and more powerful intercontinental missiles to carry the atomic warheads they were both stockpiling.

Project Mercury was something of a stop-gap. The Americans had talked of building a small winged vehicle along the lines of what would eventually become the much larger space shuttle, however the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Russians in October 1957 convinced the Americans that the soviets were way ahead of them in terms of lifting power. If they were to put a man into space before the Russians they would have to rely on their existing rocketry. The Mercury spacecraft was basically 'a man in a can' which would be shot into space atop a Redstone missile. The original design called for the craft to be 'flown by wire' from the team on the ground, but the Mercury astronauts – all test pilots – baulked at this and the capsule was fitted with a manual override.

In the event, the Russians beat them to it when on the 12th April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth. Ten months later  John Glen would become the first American to do the same in the Mercury capsule 'Freedom 7′.

Original oil painting on canvas copyright Chris Niblock

Filed under: spaceflight/art Tagged: Art, Chuck Yeager, NASA, oil painting, Project Mercury, Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe, United States, Yuri Gagarin

It's the words stupid!

'I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending misfortune impressed me. My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied. It was a wild night. (sound fx: wind whistling in trees) The wind was howling outside, (sound fx: heavy rain against window pane)  and the rain was beating and splashing against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the hubbub of the gale, there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman. (sound fx: terrified scream) I knew that it was my sister's voice. I sprang from my bed, wrapped a shawl round me, and (sound fx: footsteps) rushed into the corridor. As I opened my door I seemed to hear a low whistle, (sound fx: whistle) such as my sister described, and a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had fallen. (sound fx: metallic clang) As I ran down the passage, my sister's door was unlocked, and revolved slowly upon its hinges. (sound fx: creaking door) I stared at it horror-stricken, not knowing what was about to issue from it. By the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard. I ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground. (sound fx: body hitting the ground) She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were dreadfully convulsed. At first I thought that she had not recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out in a voice which I shall never forget, 'Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!'

Excerpt from The Adventure of the Speckled Band/The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Some bright sparks – probably the same guys who brought Muzak to a supermarket near you – have decided that what eBooks really need is a soundtrack. Their first offering is a Sherlock Holmes story but others are in the pipeline. Now, you can call me an old curmudgeon, but I'm no dinosaur: I've embraced the new technology and love my kindle, I've even gone so far as to publish an eBook myself, but do we really need sound effects to enhance the digital reading experience? To paraphrase ex-president Bill Clinton – it's the words stupid!

Yes, words. Books are full of them. Just words, but as you read them, a whole world comes to life in your head. Simples! Consider the passage below: in a few beautifully written sentences, the author provides a great deal of information about the narrator of his story.

At dawn, if it was low tide on the flats, I would awaken to the chatter of gulls. On a bad morning, I used to feel as if I had died and the birds were feeding on my heart. Later, after I had dozed for a while, the tide would come up over the sand as swiftly as a shadow descends on the hills when the sun lowers behind the ridge, and before long the first swells would pound on the bulkhead of the deck below my bedroom window, the shock rising in one fine fragment of time from the sea wall to the innermost passages of my flesh. Boom! the waves would go against the wall, and I could have been alone on a freighter on a dark sea.

Opening paragraph to chapter one of 'Tough Guys Don't Dance' by Norman Mailer.

We don't need to hear the cry of the gulls and the surf pounding against the sea wall to picture the scene – it's all there in the words. And what sound could be used to inform us as subtly as the words do that the narrator is a troubled and lonely man – metaphorically adrift on a sea of trouble?

My three-year old granddaughter loves books that have bells and buzzers she can press. That's fine. She hasn't learnt to read yet. She has to rely on the illustrations and her grandfather to tell her the story. The bells and buzzers are just a bit of fun for her and keep her amused. When she can read, she won't need them and neither does anyone else who can read. It's just another example of dumbing down: in effect, reading for dummies.

Filed under: writing fiction/humour Tagged: Arthur Conan Doyle, dumbing down, Norman Mailer, Sherlock Holmes, sound effects, soundtracked eBooks, The Speckled Band, Tough Guys Don't Dance

Why men should be afraid of these mice . . .

'Are you a man or a mouse?' was given new meaning this week, with the announcement that scientists have created sperm in the laboratory and succeeded in using it to produce healthy offspring. True the 'babies' in this instance were mice not men, but the ultimate aim of the experiment is to aid fertility in humans.

Researchers at Kyoto University took embryonic stem cells from the mice and by adding growth factors, created 'primordial germ cells'. These cells were then inserted into the testes of infertile mice – I wonder where they got them from - infertile mice must be  as rare as rocking horse shit, given the rodents' prodigious ability to reproduce themselves!

The techniques used in this research would have to be modified somewhat if they are to be used in humans, as men don't have embryonic stem cells which could be used to generate sperm in the same way. However, scientists are said to be working on a method which involves reprogramming adult cells so that they become embryonic cells.

This experiment and others like it, could eventually lead to a man's role in the reproductive process becoming redundant. The sperm count has been dropping for years anyway, and along with it, the male's traditional role in society. Some scientists believe that it will eventually be possible to create sperm from female stem cells, thus eliminating the need for men altogether.

I explore this last scenario in my debut novel Back Dated. Following a visit from a strange young woman, Sci-fi writer Ray Flaxman is pitched headlong into a dystopian future, where women rule the new Britannia and men are facing extinction. Feminists often claim that the world would be a better place if women were running things but I wonder . . .

In 1971, the then Education Secretary and mother, Margaret Thatcher abolished school milk, leaving many children without their daily pinta. Later, as Prime Minister she became known as the Iron Lady. It was often said of her that she was more of a man than any of the men in her cabinet. Under her premiership we saw the rise of the politics of greed and the me,me,me society which is with us still today.

Filed under: science/humour Tagged: Back Dated, Cell (biology), dystopian future, Embryonic stem cell, feminism, Germ cell, human reproduction, Kyoto University, laboratory mice, manhood in crisis, Margaret Thatcher, Reproduction, science fiction, sex, Sperm, Stem cell, The iron lady, the redundant male