Matt Sewell

My “Charmed from the tree” wooden birds are back and in the shop now. Including new additions of the Kingfisher and the nations favourite, the Robin. As before they come neatly packaged in their own nesting box with a selection of extra tid bits. Look up!

2 colour riso print poster from my Orbs of the Arboreal show in the shop now

A Tee design for Roam, printed by Howies. If your in london you really should check out where Robin is taking
the mobile library.

Ink d in Brighton have some purple paintings of mine.

Purple is the color of good judgment. It is the color of people seeking spiritual fulfillment. It is said if you surround yourself with purple you will have peace of mind. Purple is a good color to use in meditation.

Purple has been used to symbolize magic and mystery, as well as royalty. Being the combination of red and blue, the warmest and coolest colors, purple is believed to be the ideal color. Most children love the color purple. Purple is the color most favored by artists. Thursday’s color is purple.

I got asked by the wonderful people from the wonderful world of Anorak to contribute to the new bird issue of their children’s magazine. I also suggested a Blue Tit Phenakiscope (old school animation wheel) so their readers can marvel at the wonders of flight and get crafty with a pair of scissors.

I found a bunch of hand-drawn markerpen posters from 2008 and put them up in the shop cheap! Very psych, i was cranking out a lot of turkish fuzz at that time if i remember rightly.

Logo and artwork for a mobile library, more soon. For Robin Turner’s Roam London

A logo/banner for Ceri Levis’ The Bird Effect

Sambrooks Brewery commissioned me to illustrate a pack of postcards for their wonderful Wandle Ale.
The Wandle is an historic river in south London, my designs show the river’s industrial past with a slice of modern day riverside ramblings.

The ever industrious chaps at Caught by the River have brought out there own ale in conjuction with Sambrook’s brewery and used my artwork on the label.
That makes me feel warm on the insides. The ale is proper lush too.

I did an interview for the brand-new-free-quartley arts Brighton magazine Spinde. They also asked me to do teh backpage and i thought id shine some light on soem new Spoting and Jotting characters

Coming very soon spottingandjotting.co.uk

I haven’t had a bird of the week for sometimes as quite frankly there hasn’t been any. Herring Gulls, Gulls Gulls don’t really do it for me, that’s all I’ve spotted and nothing else has been jotted for months .
Then just yesterday me and the lovely and heavily pregnant Jessica were walking up our street when a bouncing streak of blue flashed past us into a tree. What could easily of been a bin-raiding gull with a Blue Riband wrapper was… lo and behold a Jay!! So, so chuffed. It really did make my day and Jess actually saw where it came from, up behind a drainpipe on a very busy road is a twiggy nest being lovingly made, by a pair of Jays literally on the corner of our street.

I’m gonna take it as a sign, things are gonna work out just great.

For the ever wonderful Caught By The River

Last friday night i was down at the Glug networking event in Brighton organised by Crush. I collaborated with the lovely chaps from Garage Studios who brought down their pop-up studio to capture the gluggers in-front of an evolving backdrop painted by yours truly.
Its over in a blink of an eye but its the product of an evenings hard work. No room for error paint for 30 seconds then get off the stage… 5 hours, 90 people and a volcano erupting later you get this….

Garage Studios at Glug from Garage Studios on Vimeo.

With the gluggers

Garage Studios at Glug from Garage Studios on Vimeo.

Big thanks to Adam and Matt, Rosie, Carl & Helen and Matt for the pencil

Still a few day left….. Go get it

About DECKADES
We asked a bunch of our favourite artists to create some one-off hand
decorated boards that could be auctioned off to raise funds for Unicef.

We gave each of them an original 1980s blank deck from Shiners’ private
collection and let them do their thing.

The results are a showcase of their unique take on what the skateboard and skateboarding means to them.

Nobody got paid for the work they did. They all gave up their time, sweat, paint and ink voluntarily for the cause, so hats off to them for that.

All proceeds to Unicef.

For more information about DECKADES go here: http://brainfood.howies.co.uk/deckades/

Illustration about the diversity of london and the history of Cutty Sark Whisky, commissioned for their website
Has to be viewed LARGE

Sneak preview of my board for the Decades show organised by shiner and Howies. Featuring 30 years of skateboard art and customised boards by load of people including Geoff Mcfetridge wooh! All the proceeds go to Unicef.
From April 17th at the Howies shop, Queens Rd Bristol

Bluetit

Bullfinch

Green Woodpecker

Starlings
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Long-tailed tits
I had a week painting underpasses for the Old Moor RSPB reserve in Barnsley. Working with local schools and generally trying to keep warm. Really please with the outcome hopefully more to come.

I had lots of fun in Belfast last weekend, just waiting for some better shot of my piece to post as it was a tad dark.
Biggles to Kev.

Riso print coming to the shop soon.

Photos from Carnaby Street, i will post pics of the exhibition soon. They paintings will be up for another month so go and see them with your own eyes.

After a month of nowt but gulls, my lack of spotting has really been starting to get me down. But I forgot sometimes the world is a magical place and even a stroll to a suburban corner shop is a voyage of discovery.
Yesterday afternoon I was on my way to the post-office to send off a screen-print when I was alerted to a rustling in a rose bush and this little startled fellow popped out. Straight away I knew I had never seen one before and my mind raced to the bird book enclosed deep within its chasms… page 241 Redstart? No! 242 female Black Redstart? Close but this one is pink! Erm, Nightingale?? nope!! Wow. So I know reckoned he was a foreign soul blown off course and since I’m now living by the sea, Hove was his first resting place from France. So maybe he thought I was Frenchman carrying a baguette and came to me for help before realising I was northern-bird-nut and started chasing him down the street to get a better look. Poor sod. Realising he was already probably quite tired enough after his flight and needs as much strength as he can to get past all the bloody cats round here, I got one last look and let him be.

He definitely looked like he was from the Robin family and similar to a Redstart but bigger, though it was completely brown with pink tail feathers. I’m back off to the post-office in a mo, this time I’m taking my binoculars.

I’m quite sure somebody reading this blog will know what it was, so if any birders or twitchers could get in touch and let me know that would be great (contact via info@caughtbytheriver.net). I know it will probably be something local and I’ll be rightly put in my place and feel like a chump but I am willing to take it on the chin. I once found a “penguin” bedraggled and confused on Brighton beach. So I called up the RSPCA and protected it from dogs and locals, even roping in my girlfriend and her best mate too. After a few hours the navy uniformed worked turned up and taking one look at him the “penguin” leapt spritely into the sea and I was told it was a Razorbill from up the coast. So yeah I’m used to this sort of thing.

More coming soon…

the Ilford to Dagenham bus route

I got commissioned by the Artist Residence Hotel in Brighton to paint Room 1, take a trip on the magic bus to the seaside.