So there we were on Urmston Artisan Market for our first outing of the year in Manchester when the unassuming new artist Mat Pickles set up nearby and we fell instantly in awe of his rock n' roll style paintings and drawings. 

Mat's style is scribbly, scratchy portraits he does to "throw away" as he lives with the fact that a single stroke of his pen or brush can either elevate or ruin a piece. It's a concept both of us are very familiar with coming from creative professions and now making recipes - where a pinch too much of this, or too little of that, can ruin the entire batch!

“Follow your Bliss” Joseph Campbell said. So that’s what I did. I took a sweet payout from work and spent my time being creative. Drawing and painting to throw away. Making mistakes part of the process. Daring myself and seeing what I could do. It might have been one of the best months of my life. But the grown up kept popping in my head. ‘Got to pay the mortgage’, ‘got to get a soul eating job pretending to care’. Fuck it. For now – live in the moment, be passionate. Care so much about something that the world disappears.

Turns out Mat is entirely new to the art world having just left the daily grind in 2016 and with the support of his family he began to get creative, he told us:

"I was working for Sky for nearly 20 years. In November last year I was offered redundancy. I snatched their hand off. I was really glad to be out of there but I was terrified. I had no Idea what to do so I took Joseph Campbell's advice. "Follow Your Bliss". I just spent the rest of the year totally dedicated to creativity. Every day drop the kids off and straight up into the top room and make stuff. It was an amazing opportunity."

Turns out Mat (who lives in Sale, Manchester with his wife and 2 children) really loves his music too: "Music is King" and is also....a drummer... in a "big daft metal band - We blast out 70's style heavy, heavy grooves." So as you can imagine there was a lot of drummer talk in Urmston on Saturday between him and Bongo. Mat also has a deep love of Indian Tabla drums and plays with a Kirtan once a month. "Kirtan is the Hindu tradition of groups of people joining together to sing and chant beautiful Mantra and songs. It's really transformative"

How could we not own a piece by an artist called Pickles that draws, amongst other things, our favourite rock artists - it's serendipitous don't you think?

So we came home with Zappa (Frank not our Staffie) who now has pride of place in the Pickle Factory. Anyone who knows Bongo knows that Zappa has always been a source of inspiration for him. 

We wanted to let you guys know about this exciting, audacious artist and bloody nice bloke! If you get a chance check out his work on his FB page and on his website and if you feel like owning a piece of his original work or a print then I'd get in there quickly folks as we think he's going to be big news!