Painting, my journey .
I always drew , anything , pets houses you name it I drew it . But I guess there are two or three main moments that changed things for me . One was receiving a box of oil paints for an eight birthday from my Mother and the other was watching the local drunk landscape painter on the peer overlooking the Mediterranean horizon each day at dusk on the annual family holiday. What makes us paint , we all know it’s instinctive and primitive within us, painting is one of the natural activities we undertook as neanderthals.
I can still see the amazing drunk painter in my memory now. His wild eyes lit up with the reflection of sun melting into ocean and the scent of turps and oil seeping off his canvas. Much napped and textured Spanish colour shouldering, for me all this was just the greatest embrace of life I had seen, apart from VHS tapes of Maradona and Pele dancing and jinxing rings around defenders all over the globe. Painting was inspiration.
As an asthmatic maybe that gutsy capturing of moments in paint is my rebound from not breathing properly maybe it’s my way of claiming clarity during younger years dogged by breathing issues. Those lucid impressions of life that came from the knives and brushes of the impressionists symbolized a kind of archaic rejoice of the imagination. Characterful faces in passionate colours yeah why should reality be so subdued.
As much as I admired Bob Ross I didn’t want to paint like that but still to see the sad fall from grace that the aggressive business people around him show total lack of respect to his name and family in his absence also for me is another example of the artist life the hero’s that give everything without business and legal rationality. For me artists are too good for that world however it may not lead to a comfortable or easy journey in some respects.
Painters take us on an emotive journey, they open up the world we see and reassemble it in a visual poem. Painting has no boundaries. We’re observers romanticizing what goes on turning that moment into history.
So after painting , painting and more painting as a child I flew through GCSE’s and into a BTEC , where I met my painting tutor David Porritt, sadly also he passed away not long after. A tremendous painter who taught me to push ideas and paintings to the absolute limit. From there Nottingham Trent university where they were undergoing the conceptualizarían of anything that moved this wasn’t my career highlight and left me disenchanted with the artworld and the whole theoretical confusion around its meaning and purpose.
But I always continued painting, although otherwise focused on capoeira creating small businesses I was still always painting in my leisure time.
And then came my son Lucas into the world and with it he brought a massive creative energy back into my life. I owe it to him for my renewed love of paint and colour. Since his arrival seven years ago I literally haven’t stopped painting again of course between Dad duties and working in every and any job I’m back in love with painting and long may it last !
