Tuesday, July 05, 2005

ARTOBIT

The artist behind Primal Scream's Screamdelica logo and the Heavenly corporate bird, Paul Cannell, has committed suicide.

A long-term artist, after leaving school Cannell had bounced around various jobs, both obliquely related to graphic design (commercial priners) and not even obliquely related (he was a milkman for a while) before taking himself back to school to learn to paint as he thought it was a better option than "proper" work but couldn't do people. Through a chain of happy coincidence focused on the drummer from Flowered Up, he came to meet Jeff Barrett, who signed him up to produce work for the Heavenly roster; a more lucrative meeting with Alex Nightingale led to him being given studio space in the Creation offices.

Besides creating the legendary 'sun' for Screamdelica, he also produced the scattergun cut-and-paste of the Manic's You Love Us sleeve (often believed to be the work of Richey Edwards) along with work for the Telescopes and others.



Besides the work he did for the outside of Creation Records products, he was briefly on the roster himself, as a member of the band Crawl. They managed a single, but the album appears to have been lost in the collapse of Creation as the Oasis jet took off, leaving just a handfull of mp3s.

According to Drowned in Sound, until recently Cannell had been living in Cornwall.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

RIP Paul. thanks for the sun, never knew it was you.

Anonymous said...

I was till recently Paul Cannell's partner, and mother of his daughter Maya. I feel that, due to his genius and unfortunate sad circumstance,he deserves an exhibition of his work, (of which i have the majority), and wonder if anyone has any suggestions. Thankyou, wendy. x

Anonymous said...

Wendy, I knew Paul back in 1996, and agree that he deserves an exhibition. You could contact one of the big galleries, such as Tate Modern - I doubt they would put it on themselves, but they might be able to point you in the right direction. Best wishes, Jess x

Anonymous said...

Wendy,
I knew Paul from about 1979, lost touch when I left the UK, and, unbelievably, learned of his tragic death when I was trying to look him up to get back in touch....2 days after he left this earth.

Hope you're / have been successful in setting up some kind of exhibition / homage to Paul. If not, let me know and I'll see if I can help.

nick p

wrzlgummidge@yahoo.co.uk

Anonymous said...

Hi Wendy,
Hope you and Maya are okay. I'm living in Hereford. Do you know anywhere i could buy some copies of Paul's art work? It would be nice to have something to remember him by.
Lost your number, email me on karenparsons@live.co.uk, It would be nice to hear from you. Cheers
Karen.x

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