2012, newness, positivity ...
these are the new dready bits and pieces that make up the embark show running at the Ritz, Grand Cayman through February ...
group shows are easy on the system because the need to perform on opening night is spread across, in this case, 14 people ...
i first went to little cayman 17 years ago ... there's a certain blessed tranquility to the place a removed sense of yesteryear that calms you; the lack of the noise of progress and the haste of modernity.
i don't fish and i seldom paddle board but looking out the window the other morning, the water was shimmering and clear and three men were standing in the water, one the guide and two fishing - it's a common sight in south sound, bone fishermen walking thigh to hip deep, backpacks on, their 'technical shirts' caps and dark glasses ... casting.
the idea is to create some 'generic' images that can work on cards and other products; images that have their dreadyness intact but might be accessible to wider use.
there are all sorts of new things going on with dready and yet am drawn back to some of the original images ...
i just finished a commission to commemorate 100 years of the life of a lady ... 
i first went to britain when i was barely 9 ... little tanned island bwoy being fitted for uniforms to go to boarding school in the hills of malvern.
i like the back and forth with clients ... the subtle changes that lead to version 5.
there are 3 kinds of dready art that I can think of:
Cotton Tree is a small 4 cottage boutique hotel in Cayman ...
in the past 2 years i've done a few architectural elevation dreadys ... this is one am working on now as part of a larger piece of work that'll include the family to whom the house belongs. 
Shane Aquart
By now we’re all familiar with dready art, but in the CTA’s Elevations art show, on until the end of February, we see a new dreadyness emerging. Except for a singular appearance in a very cool green and perfectly realised VW Combi Bus, the show is bereft of the usual stick figure dready. The colours, the tone, the style, the whimsy are all there but the characters that appear are all filled out as are the elements of life, the cars, the boats, the buildings; all slightly comic versions of their reality. That said you’d spot them all as dready art the minute you laid eyes on them
“The show was called Elevations, so I included ‘architectural’ elevations and what I wanted to describe as ‘elevations’ in the dready style; the filled out characters were part of that elevated style,” Shane explains.
The filled out characters are inspired it turns out by dready designs for the new Active Capital/Dart Enterprises business Caribbean Canvas Company; a Caribbean active lifestyle clothing company set to launch in February of this year. CCC is the brainchild of Hugh Treadwell who invited Shane to do a series of dready for CCC designs.
“Hugh wanted a dready of Caribbean Canvas Company’s own, something ‘more’ really and the end result was six active lifestyle designs with more evolved dready characters. The Bone Fishing dready in the Elevations show for instance and the Divers with Grouper are both part of that series. The Girl on Jet Ski is also an off shoot of that.” Shane advises. “I loved doing these and I love the end result; a kind of new dreadyness.”
As to architectural elevations; there are ‘elevations’ of the yacht Octopus and of the aforementioned VW combi-Bus but there is one truly unique panorama of famous buildings of the Cayman landscape; starting with the West Bay Fish Fry and ending with the Mission House in Bodden town; it’s like a West to East two-dimensional slice of Caymania.
“You have to see the dusk sky in the Octopus piece.” Shane adds. “It’s purple, but it’s the Cayman panorama that I really like and I’m planning, at least in my head, versions that go further East.”
He continues: “I just wanted to add, because it’s an important step in all this, that this is the first time that dready prints have been done on island, the art for the show and the subsequent prints sold were all done at Picture This, from printing through matting, stretching and framing.”
i started to work on a series of surfing images and as i was doing the third one i thought that some alpine skiing dreadys would be just the shot as well.
i went to live in new mexico in the 1980's and work for a guy name eugenio perez; the distances were so vast that we often flew in his cessna ... I often flew his cessna, when it was airborne ... I wouldn't have wanted to fly it before, cause jah know the runway was very short, downhill and ended abruptly in a barbed wire fence!
seems appropriate to work on new ideas ... the whole vision for the top of this work in progress seemed to be new and different ... los angeles on the left and big bear on the right; the life of the client's below, part of the life anyhow ...
on the long and winding road through life some people cycle ... 
so many ways to own dready: T shirts, post cards, baseball caps, bags ... art on canvas, art on paper, art on aluminum even ...
you know just by changing the flag you change the whole context of the piece of art ... 
this is the dready image that's on the back of the bus in the post below ... it's a year exactly since i drew this for andrew and now he and it are on the way to cross the Antarctic ... 
you could always find me at the back of the bus when i was a yute, yu know ... not bad really, not even truly rebellious just, perhaps, a little troublesome, mischievous maybe
the road was long and the way was winding but the view was spectacular and the destination great ...
i think that art works well in collaboration with others ...
the whole idea of less as more ...
i first learned to dive, or at least first dove, with bella, in negril; we stayed at home sweet home ... which was sweet and not very much like home ...
the printed mounted and framed image on the wall ... the finished product, signed and delivered; taken, as it were, to the culmination of the art.
i don't have to tell the whole story cause your mind's going to tell the rest of it ... 
in jamaica everybody have a different name; horace's name is really stephenson, bull's name was richard, skinny is skinny, but slim is not and neither of them really name skinny nor slim!
it's the colours in this dready that i really like; i kind of let the mind run wild through the pastures of its imagination ... 
sometimes, just sometimes, inspiration seems to click and i think that this was one of those times ... the colours, my work on the characters, the composition, the fish in the foreground ...
you can see an evolution in the dready ness in this image, while still seeing the original context and intent. 
I think that this was one of the coolest dready things I ever did ... I love these bookmarks, love their simplicity and their absolute cool.
when you finish a project like this it isn't the end, it's the beginning ... beginning of your relationship with the buyer and with the people that the cards go out to ...
there's something salubrious about seeing your art on a wall ... an almost salacious satisfaction
should dready art be simple or more detailed ...
when I was a yute-ish yute my father used to drive an e-type Jag, my godfather used to drive a 250GT California ... 
i drank a small glass of rum on the rocks today as the sun went down over 7 mile beach ... and it was lovely.
I been thinking a lot lately about where it all started and where it's going to ... on both a personal and an artistic level ...
the vw combi is 60 years old, dready isn't!
the art on paper is one thing (or in this case aluminum), but seeing it on the wall is a whole different thing ...
3 months ago as part of a gallery exhibition I painted on a gig (spinning top) for the national gallery ... 
rumbera is a boat.
