ARTIST:

Paul Westcombe

Coffe Cups
Paul Westcombe
Sex Is Boring With Me
Paul Westcombe

These cups became the ideal surface for Westcombe’s wildly carnivalesque drawings of the sort of neurotic thoughts that plague the mind in solitary moments, their titles – Sex is Boring with Me, You’re Hardly Ever Here And When You’re Here You’re Bored – forming a self deprecating running commentary on the drawings’ own unbridled visions.

You’re Hardly Ever Here And When You’re Here You’re Bored
Paul Westcombe

Text by Ben Street

Westies Wet Weekend
Paul Westcombe
We Speak In Grunts, Sighs And Shrugs
Paul Westcombe
Spurgeon
Paul Westcombe
In The Morning In The Shower I Saw The Shit Run Down Your Leg
Paul Westcombe
Don’t Be Jealous Of Your Boss He Worked Really Really Hard For His Money
Paul Westcombe
Donald In The Bushes With A Bag Of Glue
Paul Westcombe

Westcombe’s art isn’t about the elevation of the ephemeral, but about the compulsiveness of the act of drawing: that creation itself, regardless of its environment, medium, or raison d’être, can be something transcendent. In that context, his image of Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon (in the work Spurgeon) may not quite be as satirical as it seems: Westcombe’s work has all the relentless energy and rhetorical intensity of a fire and- brimstone sermon in full fly.

5_Thum (5)
Paul Westcombe

Combining Hieronymus Bosch’s hellish distortions of the human body with Viz magazine’s lurid satires of middlebrow taste, Westcombe’s drawings are at once spontaneous and measured, casual (their surfaces speckled with dripped coffee) and baroque in their flamboyant grotesqueries.

Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups
Paul Westcombe

Paul Westcombe’s work was, like so much great art, born of boredom. Working as a car park attendant on a twelve hour shift, Westcombe started drawing on whatever material came to hand – London Underground receipts, toilet plungers, mop handles – and, especially, the paper coffee cups he’d just drained in an attempt to stay awake.

Spurgeon
Paul Westcombe
We Speak In Grunts, Sighs And Shrugs
Paul Westcombe
In The Morning In The Shower I Saw The Shit Run Down Your Leg
Paul Westcombe
You’re Hardly Ever Here And When You’re Here You’re Bored
Paul Westcombe
Don’t Be Jealous Of Your Boss He Worked Really Really Hard For His Money
Paul Westcombe
5_Thum (5)
Paul Westcombe
Westies Wet Weekend
Paul Westcombe
Sex Is Boring With Me
Paul Westcombe
Coffee Cups – Donald In The Bushes With A Bag Of Glue
Paul Westcombe
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