A couple of weeks ago I wrote and sung you a song in tribute to Stephen Sondheim. A clever enough, reasonably catchy song, I thought, though with very mediocre singing. This week I make an abstract work of art: also a little conceptual; also rather mediocre in execution. Actually, it wasn’t this week that I made the artwork (I can’t call it a painting, as I only used Sharpies, not paint!); in fact, it took me around 18 months to complete.
I’m not an artist. If I try to sketch a person the fingers come out all puffy and pointy, and sometimes there are six of them. Not quite true, I can sketch a bit, but don’t. And who doesn’t like to doodle in meetings? I put my energy more into music. I didn’t choose art at school. There were good artists at school. Angus Fairhurst was a friend in my year, and features in my 1984 Diary. He became rather famous. His humour is nicely highlighted in this video here by Tate Modern, well worth watching. And there were other talented artists in our cohort. But I dropped art. When you dropped the school subject, you dropped art. In my family it was my younger sister who was good at art, drawing elegant, elongated fashion models or funny cartoon birthday cards for Mum. Sure, when I went up to Cambridge, I rented a piece of modern art from Kettle’s Yard to hang in my room, which was next to the chapel at Downing College. Yes, rented. As one did. Pretentious of course, but heck why not? OK, so it hung just above the gramophone. The gramophone probably was inexcusable. I enjoyed art; but didn’t make it.
But this week, some 40 years on, I have my first public exhibition. A work of art I made is going to hang in a nice local Italian café, where random people can look up from their lattes and, hopefully, be impacted by what they see. I’m feeling excited. OK, I’ll come clean. First up, I engineered this. They didn’t find me at Frieze. I asked the very nice owner Michela if she would hang it and she agreed, not even having seen it properly. Secondly, it’s a fundraiser to help raise money for my son’s primary school. At the end I’ll ask you please to chip in a cup of coffee or more to the crowd funding. So yeah, it’s all a bit fake - but I’m still proper excited.
So what’s it all about? How did it take so long to do?
I’ll answer the second first. It took so long, because it’s on a big white board 165.5 cm x 49 cm, and I coloured it in, in a lot of detail, using only Sharpie permanent marker pens. It just takes a surprisingly long time to get through that surface area. Also it took so long because when I did spend a bit of time colouring in I wasn’t getting approving signals from my wife, in terms of that being the most productive use of my time, when there was rubbish to take out, bedtime stories to be read, and money to be made. So I hid it behind the sofa, and would pull it out in odd, snatched moments, do a bit and then get bored (yes, making art can be boring) until the next time a few weeks later.
What is it? Well, it’s a bit of fun really. Just a bit of colouring in. Except, really, if I’m honest, I also think it’s a really great piece. I enjoy looking at it. It gives me a mental buzz. Kind of exhilarating. I’ve looked at it more than any work of art (original, not print) I’ve ever looked at. I made a point of going to the Chicago Institute of Art to see Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which was a feast I’ll never forget, but only had around 15 minutes in front of that painting. This, I’ve spent hours with, and once it was finished, have gazed at it for the kaleidoscopic rush it gives. It has a whole lot of personal and abstract meaning. I like to think Angus would have approved. So I started to write a kind of tongue-in-cheek notice to go on the wall next to it, you know, like in proper galleries. But it turns out that there was a meaningful concept behind it all and that the notice is what I want to say in a rather un-ironic way. So before giving you the Just Giving link where I’ll ask you to chip in the price of a cup of coffee or more to support kids to engage with creative experiences, here’s what it’s about, I might as well aim high!
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Sebastian Merrick
Do Not Improve, 2025
Sharpie on Particle Board
165.5 cm x 49 cm (65 in. x 19 ¼ in.)
Do Not Improve is a work by Sebastian Merrick on a piece of discarded laminated particle board coloured by Sharpie permanent ink marker pens. The base of the work was children’s doodlings, sketches, and scribblings during a birthday party for his 9-year-old son - a non-screen activity that occupied them for some minutes. After the party, rather than take the board back down to the rubbish collection, he decided to colour it in, using the same pile of Sharpies that had been available to the children. Fascinated by the myriad lines and intersections left by the energy and enthusiasm of the children working both individually and in interaction and tension with each other, he used fields of colour in a painting-by-numbers style to bring a sense of coherence to the randomness and chaos of the children’s work, revealing trails, motifs, layers and depth of field; but always limited by what had been laid down by the children. The brightness of the Sharpie markers is in keeping with the straightforward childish exuberance and broad and intricate shapes capture their playful abandon; the complexity of the lines and adjacent colours reflects the complexity of the universe both at a macro level, such as a birds-eye view of a patchwork of fields, and at a micro level, with the multitude of psychedelic swirls, traces and trails of colour symbolising (and also actually triggering) the firing of synapses in the brain. The whole represents the existential quest to make meaning out of chaos, but within pre-determined structures. Among the words written on the chipboard by the children were three which are left uncoloured and which became the title of the work: Do Not Improve. In deference to this, the children’s lines were mostly left intact. However, in defiance of this instruction, and asking us to see beyond a piece of junk, the artist reconceived the children’s scribbles and in snatched moments over a period of 18 months drew out, highlighted and preserved the energy generated during this children’s party.With thanks to Ali, Arya, Eliana, Gabby, Josie, Masha, Maxy, Sophie, Stella, Ted, Tobias & Zach.
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Here’s the board as the children were doodling on it. To see the finished work (nah, not going to show you here) and a ‘making of’ video go to the » Just Giving page « and please make a small donation to sponsor me retrospectively (it took me flipping hours!) in support of the fabulous inner London Torriano Primary School PTA.
Please make a small donation, the price of a coffee or more via justgiving.com/page/sponsorascribble especially if you have been enjoying my free newsletter. It’ll make me happy.
If you want to see the real thing, you can pop in to Thrifty Beans on 35 Brecknock Road, Kentish Town, London N7 0BT.
Anyone can make art! You too!
Thanks for reading, folks!
Maybe. Maybe not. But attaching the philosophical question to it might make it so.