Dead Man Airbrushed chronicles Johannes Taliesin's misadventures ar Swansea College of Art in the early 1960s. Throughout we are entertained by the contradictory advice of his conscience's Inner Voice.
Johannes fails admission tests to the RAF so in response applies to Swansea College of Art as a late entry candidate. Art was not his initial choice so his unprepared folio is poor in both quality and quantity. However, to his surprise he is accepted, but as top-up for maintenance of numbers rather than due to his meagre talent. Johannes decides to deny the former in favour of the latter, thus engaging a conspiratorial myth with his pride.
Soon struggling to maintain his artwork to the college's exacting standards and clearly a bumpkin out of his depth, Johannes's delusions transport him to a surreal world. The mismatches between his daydreams and reality illustrate his failiure to rise to the occasion both artistically and socially. Dead Man Airbrushed is the tale of Johannes the impecunious outsider striving for acceptance. His inexorable disintegration interweaves hilarious mishaps in life class and painting studios with the claustrophobic atmosphere of art college life.
