I found the artist Gary Baseman a few days ago, kind of cartoony almost like Ren and Stimpy cartoon in style. It mainly features the same cartoon character in various surreal poses/environments. The bright colours and the simplistic style works really well and I love his crazy other products and toys. The website is a bit slow to load but worth the wait.

I’ve been reading a book recently with many references to the artist “Richard Dadd”. A rather interesting biography so I thought i’d add it here.

At the age of 20 he was admitted to the Royal academy of art. After a few years he decided to go traveling round the middle east, unfortunately he discovered a drug called “hubbly bubbly” while on his travels and spent 5 continuous days smoking his face off. After the fourth day he was convinced that the bubbling pipe was actually talking to him. On the fifth day of hubbly bubbly action he had deciphered the message the pipe was telling him. It was from the ancient Eygyptian god Osiris.

When Dadd came back from travelling his brain was completely fried by the hubbly bubbly. He had headaches and then decided to kill his father with a razor.

He spent the last 30 odd years in a mental asylum where he worked obsessively on fairy paintings. His most famous is the Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting he worked on for 9 years and is so thick with paint it is almost sculpture.

Lesson to learn from this: Don’t touch Hubbly bubbly, it’s some f*$ked up sh$t !