It’s been a really long journey, I got lost in the blackest wilderness for a very long time, but I’m finally back on the right track – heading in my chosen direction… Art is not something where you can say you’ve achieved your goal: it’s the exploratory journey that is the pleasure and ambition. Yes, we may enjoy some wonderful sights and places along the way, but there is no particular destination…
When I left university – after failing in my academic ambitions (principally due to a complete change in interests from economics to philosophy and psychology – but not being allowed to change course) – I tried to make a living from my life-long creative passion – art. But I had no capital or support, and prostituted myself – doing mundane commissions and speculative commercial work – for a full year. I decided this extremely insecure, hand-to-mouth, existence, was no life for me, and I promised myself I would never financially rely on art again – or prostitute my art again – instead I would focus on doing the kind of art I wanted to do – for myself (in the first instance)…
After the brief encounter with “professional art” I stumbled into computing (IT) – something that came very naturally to me (I got engrossed with programming at university), and I thrived on it. In a very real sense computer programming is the complete opposite to art: programming is mostly convergent and objective thinking to solve very specific, precise, objective, mathematical and logical problems – using nothing but a Qwerty keyboard and VDU – and producing computer code – but it has no direct permanent artifacts. Whereas art is mostly divergent and subjective thinking – and a lot of manual dexterity and very skilled manipulation of physical materials – and is not trying to solve any problems at all – it is most often purely for beauty’s sake. And an artifact is always the end result.
During a long career in IT, I continued art (and photography – once I could afford it) on my own terms… (In the early years I took out – what was for me – a huge loan to buy professional photographic equipment – that cost about a year’s average salary.) I started entirely with analogue art and photographic equipment, and later evolved with the digital revolutions in both. My IT background helped considerably in this regard, and I was able to do more and more exciting things –making creative use of the extensive opportunities digital technology offered…
Eighteen years ago (at the time of writing this) I got married, and my wife and I bought a house together – with the main ambition being to develop our art interests and to start earning money from it (on own terms). I built a large studio (from a large barn), a workshop, a framing workshop, and a digital office. I converted a van for the safe transport of large framed glazed artworks. I was able to produce digital art to museum archival standards, and submitted work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions – and sold some limited edition work at a good price. Things started to look up.
But no sooner had I started to get established, and it all collapsed due to a most heinous, psychopathic, sociopathic, attack by my insecure, irrationally and intensely jealous, (ex-)wife… The art-making complex I created, all my artworks, every photograph I have ever taken, every print I have ever made – over decades – have all gone. But that was as nothing compared to the unfathomable pain of not seeing the children, feeling their pain and confusion of not seeing me; a catastrophic breakdown, the utter terror, despair, hopelessness, blackness, I suffered – and suffer still to this day – thirteen years on… Indeed, if it were not for my son – and wanting him to learn the truth of what happened to him (and me) some day (when he becomes an adult?) – I would not be here now…
Some very intelligent women psychopaths (like Cleopatra and Livia Drusilla – and my ex), being physically weaker, are sociopaths as well – and often resort to coldly and completely selfishly manipulating others to achieve their nefarious ends – completely oblivious to the harm and pain they inflict along the way. This can magnify their powers enormously. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that such women are invariably very intelligent because they have to be to – to pull the wool over so many people’s eyes – often for years… They lead a web of lies and deceit that has to be very convincingly and consistently acted out – and so they have to be great actresses as well…
Years of depression and PTSD followed (I will never be the person I was, but I struggle on), with no creative output whatsoever for years. Most men suffer trauma like this on their own. For me, talking about it only made me feel worse. So-called “professionals”– who’ve probably never dealt with such cases before – asking naïve questions – is no help whatsoever. They are of the simple-mindedness of thinking that talking about pain helps – when in fact it doesn’t: it makes you feel worse. Re-living trauma is not any help for trauma…!
I could have produced some of the most melancholic and distressing art imaginable, but I hate depressive and dark art, and I chose not to inflict that on the world… Art for me always has been, and always will be, something positive and beautiful – something to bring light and joy into people’s lives, and preferably thought-provoking…
I look back now on those darkest years and wonder where the time went. I frequently see TV programmes, films, music, and sport from this period – but don’t remember anything about them – as if they happened before I was born – or I was in a coma all that time. For example, I recently (this late summer 2023) saw cricket documentaries about England winning the Ashes in 2015 and the world cup in 2019. I am a very keen follower of cricket (and played a huge amount in my youth: played for four different teams each week, and captained the school team), but I have absolutely no recollection of either of these momentous achievements…!
Such trauma, as I have suffered, either kills you – or you very slowly learn to live with it and slowly turn you attention to other things. Very slowly the blackness gives way to light. Very gradually the light started to come back into my life. IT has been good to me (and hopefully I to it), and it has many synergies in art and photography that I have been keen to explore. Among other things, IT has given me the financial opportunity to re-assess my life and prioritise what is important to me. Art is important to me, but I don’t want to be financially dependent on it. So in late 2021 (and largely due to melancholia) I decided to liquidate my assets, downsize, and find a suitable home in Scotland – with good art workshop/studio potential, close to the mountains, sea, and rivers (which I love) – and concentrate on art… Yes, I’d like to get my art “out there”, and sell non-originals – but I don’t want to be financially dependent on it…
I’m finally getting back unto my stride. I’ve built a reasonably sized workshop and studio (adapted from an empty outbuilding) and fully equipped it. I’ve had the budget to buy and try just about everything I’ve wanted, and have fully resumed my art journey. This time I have seen to it that there will be no disruptions…
Leave a comment