Like all children I learned to draw and paint at school. I remember the big wax crayons (were they know as chubby sticks outside the North East?), old powder paint tins now full of chalks and broken crayons, the poster paint bottles and the gnarly paint brushes but I can't remember much of what I actually painted. I enjoyed the process so much that it was my timefiller of choice. As with most children I never thought of it as a subject; rather it was something that you just did. I'd pester my mum over and over to give me a new topic to draw and then disappear to complete the task - a blessing for both of us. For some reason the only one of these I can recall - and I must have been six years of age - was a cowboy. I can remember returning with it to show her as she polished some bedroom furniture. It was nothing special I remember thinking at the time but that memory has stuck.
Equally as bizarre, certainly for subject matter if not for being a highlight, was the small painting I did of a sunlit dingo in junior school as part of a project about Australia. I remember that because it was the best thing I'd done so far and I was very proud of it - in Mr Durant's classroom in the old Northgate Junior School building in Guisborough almost 50 years ago.
My next memory was a self-portrait from around 1977. In our art class we'd been asked to do a self-portrait but to create a slightly surreal background. A surprisingly recognisable unflattering picture of an unsightly teenage me with a backdrop of an undulating school corridor. I remember it being picked to go on display and being very proud of the outcome.
Around this time was my most memorable art lesson - a lightbulb moment. Until this point drawing was a bit hit and miss - I had no method and relied on a decent eye and critical mind. Art lessons seemed to be about crowd control of a group of teenagers who hadn't chosen to do art rather than teaching anything. The long-forgotten teacher sat the pressganged class down around an unpromising still life of a pile stools and taught a basic method of draughtsmanship. It involved using the pencil as a measuring toll held out in front in a slightly self-conscious way but also breaking down what you saw into shapes and negative spaces. There were lots of checks and balances of proportions, angles and alignments which meant lines needed to be redrawn until the frame came together in the right place. That basic method of depersonalising the things in front of you to represent them on paper seemed foolproof, if a little messy, and it really stuck. I wonder whether that simple lesson fixed me firmly in realistic drawing and made it ever harder to return to the imagination of that cowboy picture so long ago.
I sailed through O Level and chose to do A Level art too and this is where the whole thing got a lot more serious. Suddenly there was a discipline and an expectation of completed homework. It was a subject rather than a hobby you could continue while at school. There was exposure to a wider range of media and styles and the occasional slideshow to reinforce the points. We learnt illustration, photography and darkroom skills, portraiture and collage. My teacher Mrs Jackson was thorough, demanding and brutally frank with her feedback. I remember being set a task of drawing something "in a decorative style" and being absolutely stumped by the question. All I heard was the question translated by me into "draw something well then spoil it". I was starting to produce decent pictures - particularly in pastel but they were technical pieces - nothing that anyone would want to put on a wall.
I was doing work in my own time too. I enjoyed using pen and ink and used to produce portraits of musicians in imaginary landscapes for friends as gifts. I dabbled in oil paints very unsuccessfully. The only painting which was kept for any length of time by my parents was a very unlifelike landscape with a white cottage next to a loch with mountains on either side. It was horribly muddy and I hated it as soon as I'd finished.
It is ridiculous that you make decisions what will affect the course of your life aged 18. Even though it as far and away my best subject, and the one I enjoyed the most by some way too, there was never any clear career path presented to me. Art college or a fine art degree were definitely achievable but I never seriously considered it. I never had a calling in the way some of my peers clearly did. I briefly considered advertising as an outlet but in the end head ruled heart and my Art proficiency and a good General Studies level shoehorned me into... an Accounting degree!
The pen and ink drawings continued at university while I dragged myself through the world of Finance but then the world of work quickly put a stop to it. I'd reached that point that many a budding sports person, musician or artist reaches. I knew it was not the career for me and so it took a back seat even though I knew and hoped at some point it may return. I knew that Accounting wasn't for me and so I set off on a career in selling computers.
I didn't return over the next 30 years although I still occasionally had sketchbooks. I took a night class that I really enjoyed in the 1990s but was struck at just how slowly and meticulously I worked (I realise now I was trying to paint watercolours the wrong way). Most work was incomplete and abandoned. I tackled subjects beyond my technical ability and so I became disillusioned. There were very few that I was happy with. The piece at the top of this blog is of the Bargello in Florence. It's from a photograph I took on our honeymoon in 1989 and was probably painted in the early 1990s.
The chair on the veranda was from a photograph I took at a homestead in Australia in 1993 but wasn't painted until the late 90s. This is one of the first pictures that I looked at and felt I could do more with my art - but I didn't (this painting is now in a home in home in Los Angeles - who'd of thought it!). Work demands just got more and more and these brief interludes rekindled a flame that I didn't have time to continue - just the occasional sketchbook with unfinished work.
The children gave me an excuse to do more. I did pastel Beatrix Potter pictures for their rooms and regularly drew and painted together with them. It gave me a much needed excuse but my work demands impinged more on evenings and weekends as I went on. I had long commutes for much of my working life and the truth is that I was tired by the time I got home. I did carry a sketchbook in the car and occasionally would sketch what I could see as I stopped for a sandwich. I have some field gates and nondescript pencil landscapes as a result.
Roll forward to 2020 and I retired in March - just as Covid struck and lockdowns began. I always planned that the artistic hobby that had been locked away wold play a bigger part in my life. The first thing I painted, probably at least 15 years after I'd last held a paintbrush, was a self-portrait of the newly retired me.
I look at it now and I like the image but technique is all over the place. I kind of knew what I should be doing with watercolour but I'd never really been taught properly so I booked a refresher at the Kenilworth Centre which took me back to basics and I really enjoyed. Since March 2020 I've probably completed at least one thing a week. There is a joy in having the time to practise through doing and a real realisation of just how hard choosing art as a career must be. I've got quicker and I'm better at visualising a final product. I'm also better at 'finishing' a painting. I'm not sure I could have saved that awful lochside oil painting but it would be fun to have a go.
I'm glad I have returned to art but I am also glad I made the decision to take a different path after school. Of course I have the "what if" thoughts but the answer is always that I made the right choices for me because I didn't have the necessary passion, confidence and commitment.
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