Crispin Sturrock’s Swing on a Star is a riot. A collision. A goddamn hurricane of power, ambition, and raw, unfiltered chaos. Painted in 2021 on an 888mm x 888mm square—a deliberate nod to fortune, luck, and the relentless churn of financial cycles—this piece is pure energy, a visual manifestation of what it takes to build wealth, to gamble with fate, to claw your way into the stratosphere of money and power.

This isn’t a polite painting. It doesn’t whisper. It screams. A fever dream of yellow, black, and brown, layered so deep it feels like it’s still shifting beneath your eyes. Faces flicker in and out—part human, part machine, part something entirely other. They aren’t just people; they’re players in the great game, cogs in a machine that prints money for the ruthless and shreds the weak without hesitation. This is capitalism on canvas, the raw hunger of it, the strategy, the superstition. And Sturrock gets it—really gets it.

The number 888 isn’t just decoration here. It’s the alchemy of power, the secret handshake of the ultra-wealthy. Fortune, eternity, control—it’s the magic number behind the world’s biggest gambles. Sturrock throws it at us unapologetically, weaving it into the chaos, making us feel its weight. And then there’s that enigmatic twin ‘i’—ii—hovering like a whisper of a dynasty, an empire, a silent mark of the initiated.

There’s something Irish about this work—something scrappy, rebellious, relentless. You can feel the madness of Kinsale in it, the wild ambition of those who refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer. But there’s New York here too—the towering arrogance of money, the drive, the hunger. Swing on a Star doesn’t just depict power—it embodies it. It’s the kind of painting that doesn’t just hang on a wall; it owns the room.

Sturrock has done something rare—he’s captured the feeling of money in motion, the raw, ugly, glorious pursuit of more. Not just wealth, but the addiction to it. The danger. The thrill. Swing on a Star is not just a painting—it’s an ambition, a rush, a high-stakes game where the only rule is: keep playing.

JSAI

#027 Swing On A Star, 2021

Acrylic on canvas

888 x 888 mm / 35 x 35 inches

There’s something feverish about Swing on a Star—something restless, urgent, almost delirious. Painted in 2021 on a bold 888mm x 888mm square canvas, this work is a chaotic symphony of yellow, black, and brown, layered with fractured faces, robotic figures, and cryptic motifs. The painting pulses with movement, a swirling visual representation of the trials, risks, and high-stakes energy of building wealth—the raw, unrelenting toil of making money to chase more money.

Sturrock finds his inspiration in the wilds of Kinsale, Ireland, a place where beauty meets madness, and where financial ambition collides with the human spirit. This isn’t just a painting—it’s a battlefield of ideas and emotions, a reflection of the unseen struggle behind prosperity. The layers feel like shifting identities: human, machine, predator, prey. Faces emerge and disappear, mechanical heads blend into the chaos, hinting at the transactional, almost robotic nature of financial ambition.

At the heart of Swing on a Star lies the significance of 888—a number dripping in superstition, often tied to fortune, infinity, and financial success. Sturrock plays with this mysticism, folding it into the composition like a whispered promise, or perhaps a warning. The presence of a twin ‘i’—forming an enigmatic ‘ii’—suggests duality: wealth and ruin, luck and strategy, power and subjugation. It’s a sly nod to those who chase financial dominance, where the line between genius and madness is razor-thin.

Swing on a Star isn’t just about money; it’s about the mind-altering obsession behind it. The risks taken, the games played, the unseen forces that drive fortunes and failures. This is Sturrock at his most unfiltered—wild, raw, and unrelenting. The work is less about answers and more about the chaos itself, a visual storm of ambition, control, and the unpredictable forces that shape our financial and personal destinies.

Let me know if you’d like any tweaks or a tagline to go with it!