Relentless

Look at the above picture. Looks like a nice enough oil painting, right? Wrong. It's actually a photograph of a real life situation with objects, people and places covered in acrylic paint.

Alexa Meade has innovated a Trompe-L’Oeil painting technique that can perceptually compress three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane. Her work is a remarkable fusion of installation, painting, performance, photography and video art, and is a truly unique subversion of a centuries-old formula.

More people now have tattoos than ever before.

What once was a marker of originality is now one of conformity. But, there are tattoos and there are TATTOOS.

At Relentless, when we talk tats, we are not talking about tramp-stamps or your average crotch dwelling cartoon character. We are referring to the latter. TATTOOS.

The type that adorned ancient warriors as symbols of superiority, success and sacrifice.

The type that were administered by hand with a tiny chisel in unsanitary conditions. Ancient markings that meant you have suffered and would suffer for what it is you believe in.

Whether you believe beauty is only skin deep or real only confidence comes from within, there is no arguing with how impressive can be.

We were reminded of this when we found this little gem online. It's a video about Japanese tattoo master, Horiyoshi III.

A picture is worth a thousand of them, and apparently actions speak much louder than them, but whatever your thoughts for us at Relentless, when we are searching for inspiration, there is nothing better than a good quote.

Here a few gems we unearthed online earlier.

Tell No One is the blog of London based filmmakers Luke White and Remi Weekes, it’s the home of their Lo-Fi film experiments. All the videos on the site are made with some pretty basic equipment - a camera, a computer and a lot of patience.

They say it is a peek into their creative process and call it an "informal brainstorm". We call it proof that lo-fi doesn’t have to mean low quality when made with love.

To be honest it doesn't matter what it's called, the work is beautiful and worth a moment or two of your time.

See more here

There was a piece in the paper the other day about the Yakuza. For those who don't know the Yakuza are Japan's traditional organised crime syndicate - like the Mafia in Italy.

The piece detailed how the journalist who wrote it was threatened. They, the Yakuza, and more specifically the men who made the threat, said if he went ahead and published the story, both he and his family would be killed - and not in that order.

The journalist decided not to write the story; he wrote a book about them instead. Not wise really, but passion rarely is.

His decision doubtless resulted in many years in hiding, and a great deal of emotional anguish and suffering for his family, but some things are more important.

Sometimes there are things inside you just have to get out because, come what may, keeping them in is worse.

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