Even with that
first picture, painted on paper, I was utterly hooked. Painting was a
new thing! My control of the paint was awkward but it could be coaxed
into doing the right thing. For twenty years I had been taking
photographs, and now here was something new to do with a photograph.
I could take pictures with a new vision - what would this look like if
it were painted? I quickly began to discover that the art world, far
from being something that "other people did", was something that I
could learn about and find enormously exhilarating. I began to read
books voraciously to learn technique, painting and drawing
continuously to train the hand to move and the eye to see. I visited
art galleries wherever I went, and I was fortunate enough to see many
original works.
Learning to paint
is a great project, but it should never be finished. Artists are
always only on the edge of all that there is to know. First stretch a
canvas, then mix any colour, then learn which colours advance or
recede, then select the right brush, then learn the paint media, then
learn about texture and brush strokes and impasto, then learn the
drying times of different paints. At the top of this hill a new vista
opens. Learn about light and dark, about emphasis, the tones of human
flesh, the anatomy of muscle and bone, the painting of hair, the mist
which seeps from the sky and blurs the distant horizon. Through that
mist another panorama awaits. Learn from the Masters: the layered
glazes of Titian; the brushwork of Van Gogh; the skies of Turner; the
hair of Millais; the smouldering sex of Lenkiewicz; the chiaroscuro of
Rembrandt; the patterns of Klimt. All the grand masters through the
ages, before whose pictures we stand in awe. If this is Gormenghast
then I am standing in the Hall of Bright Carvings. If this is the
African continent then I am perched on a rock. If this is the Galaxy
then I am a citizen of Earth.
What else do I do
when not painting or philosophising?! I must admit I am interested
in philosophy. I also play the piano, though rather badly. I have a
lovely wife named Vivien. I have four children named Hattie, Flora,
Leo and Zak, and two step-children named Cate and Alex. I have a
degree in electronics and sometimes I write poems.
