The Art

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="07be8753.jpg"> <div> <B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b70140ff339900.png" HEIGHT="21" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Art</B></div> <div> <A HREF="reviews.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reviews "><U><B>Reviews </B></U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B><IMG SRC="098339c0.jpg" border=0 width="563" height="156" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" >   </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#9933FF" FACE="Goudy Old Style" ><B>|   </B></FONT><B>  </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Martin Briley"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="commentary.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Commentary"><U><B>Commentary</B></U></A></div> <div> <B><U>The Art</U></B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0dee89f0.jpg" border=0 width="232" height="159" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">     The artwork from all three of my solo albums, "Fear of the Unknown", "One Night with a Stranger" and "Dangerous Moments" appear in a number of books devoted to album cover design. I had studied graphic design at art school in London and was therefore deeply involved in the visual presentation of my music. It was my intention to use Photo-realistic artwork for all three front covers and Bill Levy, the art director of Polygram Records at the time, was happy to have me sorting through numerous artist's portfolios in search of the style I had in mind. <IMG SRC="0aaf8f90.jpg" border=0 width="248" height="249" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Being a modest kind of bloke I chose to exclude myself from the album art credits, however, after the second album "One Night with a Stranger" had it's artwork nominated for a Grammy Award I changed my mind! So I did share in the credits for art direction on "Dangerous Moments" which was also nominated for a Grammy Award. The original idea for the back cover of "One Night with a Stranger" was a photo of me wearing a soaking-wet, black suit, standing in a puddle of water, as if I'd just escaped from the room on the front cover. However, no matter how many buckets of water they poured on me the suit still looked completely dry. They <IMG SRC="0ac211a0.jpg" border=0 width="289" height="282" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">even tried slapping Vaseline on it but it made no difference! Having blown our budget our only option was to have me pose fully-dressed in the producer's swimming pool. I was assured the pool had been heated for a few days but discovered too late that the heater had in fact blown a fuse. The water temperature was about 55 degrees <IMG SRC="0c26c6e0.jpg" border=0 width="108" height="110" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">and I almost suffered from exposure, but I believe the neighbors were quite entertained! The artwork for "Fear of the Unknown" was painted by Norman Walker, and both "One night with a Stranger" and "Dangerous Moments" were painted by Stan Watts. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>                                                                                                                                                      <IMG SRC="08927440.png" border=0 width="39" height="68" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">                                                         </div> <div> Swimming Head Productions</div> <div> Copyright 2002  Martin Briley , J. Stephen Smith</div> <div>   <a href="http://s14.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s14martinbriley" target="_top"> <img src="http://s14.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=s14martinbriley" alt="Site Meter" border=0></a>   </div> </td> </tr></table></body>