Martin Maloney  born in London in 1961 is a contemporary artist. He paints in a deliberately crude fashion. Martin Maloney is an influential figure in a new generation of British artists. His highly coloured, expressive paintings have reintroduced a sense of the romantic into contemporary art. Maloney gives a lecture about his work which has been shown in such landmark exhibitions as Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997. Martin Maloney practises deliberately "bad" painting, where images (mainly figures) are achieved with apparently inept draughtsmanship and crude painting. Through his expressionistic style, strong colours, and humorous subject matter, Maloney's paintings record everyday experiences and moments of awkward intimacy. He often incorporates references to art history, from Vermeer to George Baselitz. He sees his work as a celebration of "the ordinariness of people", and wants, for example, to elevate the stereotype image of the socially-deprived single mother. He has also said: “joked to a friend that I was painting men I wanted to fuck and girls I wanted to be. The more I paint, the more I am learning about my fantasies and the reality of who I am and who I want to be.”

A new book accuses Martin Maloney of represeSmart gallery, bright lights, big paintings. The Anthony d'Offay Gallery is hung with portraits of young mums with their babies, someone with a Yorkshire terrier under each arm, a New Zealand women's rugby team and two group portraits of schoolkids. The paintings have titles like We Are Family, Equal Opportunities and Community Association, and they are loosely based on photographs from newspapers and magazines.

They are painted with a rumbustuous panache - or, looked at another way, with a gauche lack of sophistication. One moment you think they are truly terrible, the next you are won over by their high-key colour, their gawky, wonky drawing. The oil paint is slapped and slicked on and pawed about at speed, to overcome the inertia and intractability of the medium. The artist has a problem with ears, eyes, noses and hands; hair seems to be made from marmalade or foam rubber. The dogs look like Gnasher from the Beano.

It must be the paintings of Martin Maloney. When everything is a problem, it begins to turn into a style, and after a while you get used to it. The awkwardness begins to have a kind of emotional tenor and expressiveness. All the figures are painted as individuals; each one is a problem to be resolved. No one is a cipher, and Maloney tries to give his subjects a character, a singular demeanour and poise. Sometimes the results are laughable, but you also find yourself laughing with him.

There's nothing new in this clownish tightrope walk, but it is quite compelling to watch. You want the artist to fail and fall, but at the same time you're even more pleased when he doesn't. Maloney's work may not be saying anything terribly deep, but then watching someone wallowing in profundity can be embarrassing. It isn't given to every writer or artist to be able to articulate the riddle of life.

Maloney gained some notoriety for his Sex Club paintings in Saatchi's New Neurotic Realism show last year, but the big question was not so much their outré subject matter - scenes of noting the worst aspects of Britart. But Adrian Searle says the artist's simple style is not simple-minded fuck-rooms, desolate, anonymous sex and nocturnal escapades in the bushes - as their heroic ineptitude. Maloney's presence here, in the same gallery that sells work by substantial figures such as Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Rachel Whiteread and, currently in another part of the gallery, Gwen John, isn't just some kind of awful lapse, unlike d'Offay's show last year of sculptor Ron Mueck. Instead, it just feels a little premature. It may even be cynical - but dealers are dealers.

Maloney talks about his work in terms of "an expressive painted language", and a daring to aspire to the "wildness and restraint" of Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon.

He also gives a shout for Jean Edouard Vuillard, Richard Dadd (the Victorian fairy painter), Georg Baselitz, Vasili Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Ian Davenport's poured paintings, as though to name-drop his way into the pantheon. But he also, tellingly, talks about Pedro Almodovar and Alan Bennett, and you sort of know what he's getting at.

The difference is that Maloney's paintings aspire to more than they achieve. Still, at least he isn't worthy in the way so many British painters are, or afflicted with that awful combination of the three Bs - Baselitz, Basquiat and Bullshit. Maloney "joked to a friend that I was painting men I wanted to fuck and girls I wanted to be. The more I paint, the more I am learning about my fantasies and the reality of who I am and who I want to be." At least he'd like to be himself, whoever that is, and the bullshit is worn lightly.

Hype, self-promotion and the market clearly have a lot to do with an artist's visibility, and need to be disentangled from whatever merits the art might have on its own account. Julian Stallabrass's new book, High Art Lite, attempts to unpick the larger social forces at work in the now decade-long enthusiasm for new British art. High Art Lite may at first appear to be an apt description of Maloney's paintings, and indeed his paintings are used as illustrations, and his writings are quoted at some length in the book.

Maloney, regards his own paintings as "enjoying the ordinariness of people". "In culture, the working-class single mother is usually seen as a victim plagued with social problems. I wanted to paint the opposite of that," he says of one of the new works.

Stallabrass seems alienated from the labour of his fellow workers. His problem, as a critic and an analyst, is that, like many Courtauld Institute-trained art historians, he's curiously disengaged when it comes to discussing the things artists actually make. He comes on like an auditor, balancing the books between the artist's stated intentions and the things they produce, which he tends to read as documents. There's a deadness about his expositions that makes me wonder whether he actually likes art. But no - he's far too serious to like things, and is more interested in "taking on the art world as a whole, showing how it is thoroughly entangled with the society, its economy and politics". This is laudable, but I think that's what he'd like artists to do too.

His clueless characters surround themselves with props: a TV set, a cat, a walkman…Judging by the limp limbs, complete with stretched hands and awkwardly contorted feet, they do not know how to operate them or even engage with them. Indeed there is not much you can do with an unplugged vacuum cleaner (Hoover Deluxe) still that is not a real matter for concern. The objects’ utility is discarded in favour of their decorative appeal .

Everything remains on the surface. What you see is what you get. Ordinary gestures, like putting away clothes or frying eggs, are emphatically re-enacted as if responding to some photo call. And yet, these figures are not even idle. They look like the honorary members of some special people’s club, a fantasy projection of a child trying to imaging his or hers own grown up life. In this, the paintings share the same philosophy of 50s’ teenage girl magazines with their domestic tips. The hair, the clothes, the shirts are all carefully selected. The subjects look immaculate in their effort to play their role and yet they remain hopelessly isolated, striving for attention and seeking companionship in the paraphernalia of contemporary life. The mundane becomes a cause for fascination and gives an identity, however fake, to the characters. They dream in Technicolor. "

I was thinking of the 17th Century Dutch group portraits and I wanted to work out how that sort of painting would be painted now. I saw contemporary equivalent to those large dark paintings of Regents and Burghers in newspaper photographs of human interest stories. From these pictures of moments of happiness and personal achievement, I have painted the world I have lived in, and people I have known. Mixed Ability is from a picture of inner city school kids surrounding their teacher. I used it to make a painting which celebrates the moment of adolescent rebellion. The kids stare out in defiance. I tried to make a catch-me-if-you-can confident swagger of no hopers adolescent anarchy. I painted kids who customize their uniform with low-slung ties and jewellery in irritation of archaic rules of discipline. My ethnic mix of adolescents in school uniform is painted in a reduced palette of two colours, grey and yellow, bright but monochrome making the background space seem like a cut out far away place."

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

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Martin Maloney Cat painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

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Martin Maloney Love Bug Painting Sale on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

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Collector's Guide: Autograph collecting tips

Collecting autographs is a fun hobby, tips on the best way to get your baseball or book signed?

You look down at the scrawl in your notebook, reliving the experience over and over again of standing in line for hours; waving your pad and paper in the air at the slightest sign that your idol would come out to you and the other fans. Suddenly it happened; the pen taken from you and the notebook, the quick signature shoved back into your hand as another wave of fans pushed by you towards the barrier as you retreated, lost in a wave of happiness as you add the autograph to your mental highs. But getting an autograph can be both easier and harder, depending on how you want to proceed.

One way of getting an autograph is to attend the function and stand in line, hoping that the star you're attracted to will spend the time to sign autographs. The only problem with this is that there's a big chance that he/she won't stop and sign - many stars these days are concerned with personal safety and security and rarely hesitate for a session - or their own personal bodyguards disapprove and move them along as quickly as they can. But this is one of the best ways to assure yourself that the signature is authentic and certainly the most thrilling.

Another less stressful way is to send your book backstage with one of the stagehands or security guards; attaching a small note and perhaps a few flowers for your idol, asking politely for a signature. Most stagehands or guards will perform this small errand for free or for a few dollars, delivering the package backstage in plenty of time for the person to sign at their leisure. Returning after the performance to the stagedoor or where you met the delivery person and retrieving it is another way of obtaining the autograph and not putting any stress on anyone. Many stars appreciate this method because it is at their own discretion and on their own schedule, not a mixed mob of screaming fans waving books in their faces. Your odds are much higher with a nicely-worded note of thanks as well as a good attitude all around.

This also works for sports fans; sending the intended baseball or poster into the clubhouse via a security guard or usher. Most players greatly appreciate not being disturbed during the preliminary warm-ups of the game and will willingly sign at their own speed while waiting for their turn to play or a break in the action.

The last and perhaps the riskiest in a way is to purchase an autograph from a dealer. This is a great alternative if you want a foreign star's autograph or someone who doesn't live in your part of the country and therefore is unlikely to be available for a local performance. Many on-line auction sites and local conventions will have dealers who carry a plethora of autographed pictures for sale of almost anyone who's ever been on screen or television - and others can be found with a few clicks of the mouse.

The only caveat is that you don't know where or when the autograph was given - nor if it is authentic. Unfortunately there is a chance that you might get a forgery, although this is small indeed. Many dealers include a certificate of authenticity with their product guaranteeing that this indeed is a real signature and valid and the average collector would be best to keep said certificate and pursue any legal action should your purchase prove to be false.

Many people think that if their specific autograph is different from another displayed in a magazine or auction house that it must be false. This, unfortunately, is not true. As our own signature changes over time, celebrities have their own changes as well. Signing dozens of autographs a day can result in a scrawl that has no resemblance to the neat signature shown in another catalogue and the buyer should remember that before accusing any dealer of forgery. Again, you can only be truly certain of authenticity by obtaining it yourself which is why the autograph market is so fluid - it truly is a case of supply and demand.

If you want to get it yourself, always be prepared with the right items - a working pen and a clean sheet of paper at the least. Many stars don't have the time or inclination to stand around as you fumble for a new pen or scribble their names below the parking ticket stub. Be aware that these people are on the clock constantly and your autograph will depend on how fast you are prepared and willing to go with the flow of traffic.

Autograph collecting can be fun and profitable for anyone who wants a little bit of stardom for their home or office. And with a few quick tips, you can score every time with the right stuff!