One of my dad’s hobbies was painting and drawing, I used wander past while he did thing’s in the kitchen I didn’t understand, like listening to Irish folk music. I’m unsure if we saw eye to eye, I didn’t bother ask, I liked brash, shiny, American things. He let me be.
After he died I inherited his carefully collected “How to” art books, they are largely lost on me, I’m a mummy’s boy, it’s an unfortunate inherited personality trait – I learn by doing not reading. . .OK, I do things without reading the instructions. . . and when it doesn’t work I do the same thing again. . .
One the the books I inherited is called Painter’s Progress. . . be careful.. . things can turn full circle and bite you on your ass. . . He love ink & oil, as do I, we use them differently. . .
Here goes. . .
Due to a protracted argument with my English teacher I ended up studying science, I got a BSc & a PhD in Cell Biology, gainful employment but world of pain. In 2013 a science friend of mine turned up on my doorstep with a box. What’s in that? Oil paint! Is it? Got a brush? Yes! Best come in & let’s have go . . .
Self portrait as the tortured soul of Francis Bacon. A5: Oil on cardboard. . . not the most illustrious start, I got oil paint up the stairs and into the bath. . . still happens today tbh. . .
Diabetes and drawing.
By 2010 my immune system had killed my entire collection of pancreatic beta cells, yeap, I had Type 1 Diabetes. For some reason drawing became a crutch – thinking, reasoning, shouting. I thought I could combine biomedical science hastey drawing in communicating ideas about diabetes. I got an MA (Distinction) in Drawing.
Like a lot of people I’d spent a some weekends in galleries. Some people like sculpture or performance, I was drawn to painting.
Lampost.
Then something unforeseeable but nasty happened, they drove trucks down my road and light up my garden. . . the only response I had, not being one for performance, was to take to painting. . . an untried medium. . . that I had no real understanding of. . . what so ever. . .
Maybe the paint fumes drove me mad & I developed a lamppost obsession but I saved electricity by working on top of my studio late at night, the police were called but it was unclear if laws were broken or so said Lewisham Council who erected the pointless lamppost. . .
Insulin.
I decided to use the remaining paint to make 3 works about life with Type 1 diabetes, a sort of tryptic snapshot, I’d seen painters do something similar in galleries. . . . These images are about having to inject insulin when I eat, to the excitement of exhibiting my tubeless insulin pump on the Tube and what can happen if one ends up with too much insulin on board.
Drainting.
By now I had friends who could draw and paint, they had open reservations about quite why I wanted to try my hand at painting some advised against it. I learnt, quite quickly, painting is quite (radically) different to drawing. . . It might sound weird but I panicked & tried to combine my “linear” drawing style with painting. . . I was now “drainting”. . .
It wasn’t easy, I don’t understand paint or colour, at times I felt in some way I was, as Harry Crews wrote in “climbing the tower”, I was engaged in a doomed folly. . .
I read a lot about and sort out Pop Art, if I was going to die I would try to do it making bold bright, brash, American paintings. . . neither have happened yet. . .
Nobody.
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived, people went crazy. . . I was one of the worst. . . I’d always been on the edge. . . I took the opportunity not to try to learn how to paint but sit about in a somewhat angry stupor. . . shouting. . .
During the pandemic I had to imagine things. I’m kind of a figurative artist, if I meet some someone I’ll get my sketchbook out and draw some one else while nodding. Another unfortunate personality trait.
Now there was nowhere to go and nobody to draw or paint.
It became a internal monologue. . .
Where next?
A double portrait obviously!
