Love Lockdown

Living life trapped in the (c)rippling bodies of two relentless little boys isn't easy. 

Every week we make plans to revisit our blinding golden youthful days of productivity, to be irresponsible, to gather our paintbrushes together and to be carefree, slender and horny again. Then we realise we've got the gas man coming round on Tuesday evening so we cancel. This process of constant premature ejaculation has existed in our (self-described) 'masturbatory' process together for a while.

Thankfully the beauty of an art career is that there are no deadlines, no commitments, no pressure to be inspired, and no rules. Otherwise we'd have been P45'd and humiliated in the boardroom in front of all of our sweaty peers ages ago.

So, in a pathetic attempt to conquer our responsible, distracted and comfortable minds we conjured up a plan! 

2 men, 2 sleeping bags, a list of painting titles, 3 bags full of high fat foods, 2 bottles of gin, 16 beers, some pink lemonade, a blow up doll, an Xbox, FIFA 15 and a smelly studio room in Wakefield all combined to create the weekend from hell.

Suppries

The plan was that we could, in theory, shut ourselves in our studio for an entire weekend and by stimulating our bodies with constant booze and sweets we'd manage to create a year’s worth of new paintings in one massive orgy explosion of creativity. The plan was fool-proof. 

Day 1:

We arrived Friday evening equipped with the all the important technical tools and vigour of real life art-superiors.

The first thing anyone notes when being forced to spend any sustained period of time in our studio is the inconvenient importance of taking off any clothes that matter to you. Every corner of our once shiny white box room has been soiled with the left over crud of previous paintings or the casual drunken cake-toss. When intending to sleep in a room it is important to filter out the necessary hygiene hindrances such as 4 week-old Double Cream. The wounds of last month’s messy presentation of Miniature Hero 2015 'Mary Berry' were still sticky and smelly - so yet another joint trip to the bogs seemed an apt way to start our evening!

Cake Farts

One cake-dump later and we were set to go! 

My Rifle, My Pony & Me

8 games of FIFA later and we were set to go!

Snacks for Spacs

One consumption of massive pizza and chips later and we were set to go!

Ok, what we're trying to say is - old habits die hard. We fucking procrastinated for ages and ages - we drank some horrible drinks, had some perverse conversations, did some smelly farts and got very, very cold.
Eventually, at about 1am we decided we'd build a canvas with our consumption greased hands and impatient attitude.
Cue the creation of painting number 1 - The American D.ream.

Bed. Cold, hard, worst-nights-sleep-ever bed. Well deserved prison of shit-behaviour and poor life choices. True romance.

We awoke dry-mouthed and shoddy - ready for the next day of our creative marathon.

Day 2

A few awkward morning boners and a shivering desire for callousness led us to escape to next door’s Subway for a tea and a good half hour bitch about the other customers. We feel it is always important to start the day with a bit of light-hearted nastiness; a bit like brushing your teeth, it cleanses your soul of all the immoral plaque that stains your mind. Amused by the thought of a dusty looking bloke ordering a 6-inch Italian with "just onions" and our agreed theme of the day 'Robots' we decided to write a poem:

Do you wanna build a robot?

Or ride a bike around the hall?

Do you wanna climb a tree?

Or just sit in here with me?

In this room that smells like onions,

But not from yesterday,

These onions are forever,

...and the onions shout "Hooray!"

We fumbled our way back into the studio and decided we were going to do a painting of grown-up geek culture (perhaps inspired by the Pokémon t-shirt wearing onion bloke in Subway). Research is essential to the practice of any super-scientist, and we are no exception - so we skulked off down to our local Games Workshop to ogle the smelly ogres and the goods on sale, and came away with a wealth of knowledge and expressions to use.

Because of this hard-graft, our second painting fell together nicely - Love, Sex, Magick.

Cue loads of self-congratulation and more FIFA. Too much FIFA in fact. We knew we were due visitors and had only created 2 paintings in the space of 24 hours and panicked... but we cunningly innovated a new work out of our big blue dust sheet we had masking taped to the wall. 'Don't go Chasing Waterfalls'.

God we're clever.

Our visitors arrived; we welcomed them with loud hammering, spastic DIY, pizza and winter flavoured beers (delightful). Another canvas built and primed in the presence of our beautiful fanbase. 

Then, in a true moment of inspiration (our best of the weekend) we decided it was time to stop all this horrible laborious art behaviour, put our comfortable shoes back on and to go home to our warm beds. 

I think the moral of the story is - do some stuff that you want for a bit. But don't do it for too long - because then it will become a nuisance and you won't want to do it anymore. Everything in moderation as they say. Spending over 24 hours in each other’s company has further cemented our love of one another, and our dislike of having to do as we're told (even when we're the ones telling it). Our untameable appetite for artistic creation has to balance its self against our desire for luxurious experiences, yet again we have exposed ourselves for what we truly are:

Distracted, ambitious, soft-hedonists. Art-superiors.