“Meat Guitar (Your Jazz Chops Are Ready)”

A few months back I wwas approached by The Musical Youth Foundation to take part in an interesting and unique project.

Painting of a steak, on the front of a guitar

The Musical Youth Foundation is a children’s charity that aims to provide every child on the island of Ireland with musical education. Their new awareness campaign, “Music Changed My Life” is designed to raise awareness of the value of music education and its life changing benefits.

As part of this project they were inviting artists to use the body of an instrument as a canvas to create a masterpiece to create something completely new. This “instrument art” would then be exhibited throughout Dublin in a unique and distinctive way, in the windows of retail spaces. Ultimately, they will auction the instruments in order to generate much needed funds for the Musical Youth Foundation.

“I come from a musical family, and think a musical education is very important, so really like the idea of The Musical Youth Foundation and what they’re doing. The jumped at the opportunity to participate for a couple of reasons – firstly, i’d have chance to do my first actual non-digital painting in nearly 20 years; and secondly that it would be on a guitar!

My initial thought was to paint a cross section of a body, internal organs etc, but thought it might have been a little optimistic given my lack of experience in the medium. Instead i went with the meat axe idea, working on a t-bone look. It was Peter Donnelly who provided the jazz chops line, which i liked, given it was a semi acoustic, and i’m a fan of jazz too. The whole experience was great, and i’m pretty happy with how it turned out!”

Watch a time lapse painting of the Meat Axe here…