From Amateur too Professional

Initiated as an ink pen drawing, this work naturally followed on from ‘In a State of Limbo’ (see previous entry), though this time I had moved from a position of reactive social environment to an introverted isolation which I unwittingly found when communing with nature.

Brickhill Woods in north Buckinghamshire is perhaps where I spent an inordinate amount of time meditating amongst the trees and undergrowth, hiding myself away from the troubled aspects of my social degeneration.

There is a sense of clandestine ritual affiliated to the rawness of emotion in the depiction of my figure, so close to defeat yet somehow managing to claw at an exit from the dilemma of the situation. The fact that I had painted the work in oil was of no real concern to me at that time, it was a medium introduced to me during my A level education. It was a medium that I had little experience with, but I took too oil paint like a duck too water. I felt as though somehow the paint in its sticky lustrous malleability, extracted without effort, the emotional input of making a painting.

I had little educated technical knowledge of the medium and so I relied purely on my naivety of it which left me only being concerned with the actual expression of painting itself. It was as though the oil paint had a life of its own and I played just a small part of putting it on the canvas whether that was with brushes, knives, rags or my hands.

The original painting, after having been stored in a friends loft for three years, and then moved several times to other locations around Milton Keynes has become lost somewhere along the way, perhaps this is a fitting end to the lowest point of my life.

Now just to back-track a little and to give you a better understanding of how my work has developed since my first 'Limboid', I thought it only fair to highlight some significant precursors to the road which lead me to enrolling on my BA degree course.

1998 was really the beginning of my….., well I want to say decision, but really it was not a decision, more of a psychological whipping to pursue my unconscious desire to become an artist and a painter.

‘In a State of Limbo’ was without question my first pre-professional painting that I had created. The motivation for it was manifold, but most significantly it was a result of being used and abused, the feeling of being coerced into something that you are not. This experience came not only from industrial coercion but emotional coercion too. Dramatic as it sounds, it is true. In the previous post I showed you my first ‘Limboid’, which while being true, it is a painting which I retouched in 2006 due to my negligence in it’s storage. I felt it necessary to re-stretch the canvas and retouch the work after having been stored in my friends loft for three years whilst I was living in Texas, USA.

The primary rendition of the work, I feel compelled to show you, as it shows you a pre-educated painting, and as a side benefit, you can see that my 2006 re-working, which I feel, somehow reveals how I tightened up my grasp of tonal understanding. The original whilst being somewhat naïve, does in my perception, have a solid composition, but was lacking in a knowledge of physical painting practice which I compensated for in the retouching of the work in 2006.

As my first blog entry, I felt it in order to give a little background to my present position in my ambition to become a professional artist.

Mini-Biography:

Born in Northampton England 1968, I have always been a keen artist, attaining the highest achievement in art and craft awards in my final year at Bushfield Middle School aged twelve. Continuing my secondary education at Radcliffe Comprehensive, I further continued to develop my artistic abilities, culminating in an 'O Level' grade A in fine art painting and drawing, one of only two pupils to achieve this grade in my final school year aged sixteen. Side swiped by the work-a-day world, it was not until 1991 that I decided to expand upon my art education, enrolling at Milton Keynes College in ‘A Level’ fine art, which resulted in a disappointing grade C. 1996 to 2000 saw myself become disenchanted with my circumstances which sundered me under the thumb of depression. Ironically this inspired me to return to my artistic underpinnings. My work became very intense, emotionally charged, and powerful, which is evident in my older work which I call 'The Limboids'. Now happily married to my American wife Doreen, I have a new found enthusiasm for life. With the full and loving support of my wife, I am now undertaking my BA degree in fine art painting and drawing at the University of Northampton and aspire to earn my MA in a major London art college or university. I am in the early stages of my art career and difficult though it is to be professionally renowned in the art world, I am not content to confine myself to the ranks of the amateur.