Why Irate scissors?
I adopted the name from a friend and artist Anya Thompson who was making small press comics. Irate Scissors Howling at the Moon was a favourite. I wanted a badge to work as an umbrella for my arts activities and asked if I could adopt the scissors as my logo. “Not without paying” Now money was short so we bartered. For my splendid logo I paid this price: One 26 inch rear bicycle wheel (with gear cassette) in good condition which I would fit and one good quality whole free range chicken with giblets. The large original hand drawn artwork has not survived and the digital version that at the time seemed way to big for any screen is just tiny. I have made a new version of the image – I hope it does justice to the violence and anger and humour of the original .
Who Made This Site and Why?
My name is reid I have made my living from the arts and I have built this digital presence to share stuff show off some of the things I do, to chatter at length about things that interest me when I can’t get to sit in a room and have a proper chat face to face. I expect this will mostly be with my friends but I am always happy to meet new people and try to work out what makes them tick, whirr or buzz, susurrate and howl …
Illustrations
I would like to showcase some of the illustration work that I have done over the years. I am not a full time illustrator I spend most of my working days looking after visitors in a major public arts venue in London. I would like take on more illustration work if you are interested in hiring me you can get in touch here. If you were interested in representing my work I would also be very happy to talk to you. The majority of my commercial work has been for the Historical Association which has it’s own tab on the navigation bar. As time goes on I will add some pages about some of the images here. I work in a variety of media both traditional and digital. I don’t plan to provide “how I did this” information unless asked. There plenty technical information on the web but if you have questions I would be happy to answer and if there something particular you are keen to know more about do ask. What lies at the core of what I make is ideas. Most of the pictures here are about taking complex and sometimes abstract ideas and trying to represent them within a single simple image. It making images that communicate ideas and tell stories I am interested in, and this is what I plan to add as a commentary on some of my work.
Chatter
As you are looking at a web page I suspect that you too sometimes chatter to your mates on the internet.
The trigger to do this rather than just think about it was a list your ten most important albums conversation with friends on Facebook. I started to construct my tuppenceworth towards this and realised that what was emerging was not