In the beginning ...

My journey with Art started in my formative years. I can recall being at Secondary school in the UK and being about the age of 14 years old. This was the year that Art took a hold of me and in many forms, from painting to sculpting and even Technical Drawing. Though why it took hold of me in these years is quite mind-boggling considering the construction of Art during these years was to pass an exam.

We had many teachers, who instructed us on perspective, shade, tones, light and different media. They also taught us about some of the Artists through the ages and about the many forms of Art. In hindsight, one thing I never remember them telling us is that Art not only has to be a part of you but also that in learning the many ways of constructing Art, the form our Art took didn't have to be to a prescribed format. 

In a subtle way, I guess they were trying to show us this, through other Artists work however in the end what mattered was passing our exams, so our Art became construed in form by a prescribed format destined to give high marks for exam purposes. This is now what I refer to as soulless and mind-tampering Art, it serves one purpose only to demonstrate various learned techniques and strips the individuality of Art away.

Prior to my exam year and still at the age of 14, my Art was influenced by genre's such as Sci-fi and Fantasy, as well as the fields of Dance, Drama, Music and even technical pictures of Trains and motorbikes. Music was an odd one as I didn't really follow music in my childhood, yet the Artist with a flair for Drama and Fantasy caught my eye, people like Steve Strange from Visage, David Bowie and some of the New Romantic Bands.

Steve Strange from Visage

Also heavily featured in my life at the time were the Periot dolls, which was strange as I found and still find other clowns very bizarre and odd. I guess at the time I was going through my Fantasy and Facades period, fuelled by my love for drama and the dramatic. 

To this effect my favourite medium - inks (Windsor & Newton) added to my fervour of the dramatic and fantasy, whilst they gave a watercolour effect the pigments gave a far more drama in the picture than I was able to create using watercolours. The inks would allow me to create magical, fantasy art using leaf shapes to draw and design mystical creatures and Faerie Castles perched high on precarious rock cliffs.

I loved these fantasy paintings but then one day, one teacher came along and crushed my creativity, giving me a reality check that was quite harsh for a 15 year old to take in. I was told that whilst my painting was 'nice' and looked 'great' it wouldn't under any certain terms help me pass my exam and at the end of the day, passing exam is what it was all about.

I sat befuddled for a moment and collected my thoughts and asked, so what will? This took the teacher by surprise, I guess he didn't think I would be interested, so he turned and looked at me once more, gathered his thoughts, smiled and preceded to tell me that I needed more realistic paintings, learn to do still life, use perspective, shade, tone, lighting - all the things we had been taught in the last year and a half.

So with that in mind, I turned to my Technical drawing expertise for inspiration - steam trains it would be, my love of Architecture, Victorian Railways, my love of books, meets railway children and viola I would have a painting that even Robert Stephenson would be proud of. For still life, I did extra classes and studied Renaissance Artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci for form and inspiration. Happily I passed my Art Exam with a Grade B, however the defining moment had been the Art Teacher crushing my creativity and my passion for Art had been tempered so much so that the only purpose for Art in my mind was now firmly transfixed as for passing exams.