Art

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What is art? This is a difficult question. Clearly, one man's art is another man's pile of bricks. Yet who is to judge? For me, art is an expression of a creative urge; an urge that won't be denied. To do so only results in discontentment and a feelng of emptiness within the awareness of the inner Self.

As a child I was always drawing. I would sit on the floor drawing our neighbour's faces with a piece of chalk inside the open bottom cupboard door as they sat talking to my mother.

By eight or nine I could produce a reasonably good likeness but the drawings would only last until I had to wipe them out to draw again. Even so, I rarely drew on paper, and so I have no record of those prolific years.

As one would expect, art was my favourite class at school and I quickly become 'teacher's pet' in secondary school. When I was fourteen my art teacher put my name forward for a place at Manchester School of Art because they were offering six scholarship places to the schools in greater Manchester. Six places was not many for a catchment area of several thousand pupils; some three hundred applied. To win a scholarship the applicants were to present three new drawings for judging by the college panel. One was to be a perspective street scene, one a still life, and one a face. This last being an easy one for me, I concentrated on the street scene and the still life. I was offered a scholarship place at the college for the full degree course and both me and my art teacher were thrilled. However, My parents were not at all happy about this and virtually turned down the scholarship out of hand. My art teacher came to our house to plead with them but they remained steadfast in their decision and I subsequently left school at fifteen and went to work as a van driver's mate delivering bread.

Once I started working, got married, and had three children I lost interest in art (maybe an unconscious reaction to the wasted opportunity) and it would be another twenty five years before I felt inspired to draw again. 'Barbarian', is one of the first sketches I did at that time but rather than get proper materials together I simply used a black Biro on some scrap paper. Not the best medium to use but nevertheless it seems to have survived the ravages of time and remains reasonably viewable to this day. You will see others from about that time (1982) in this small gallery. At some point I tried pastels ('Fox Cubs') and ('Indian Head Dress') and water colours ('Knight Returns').

I have now set up a dedicated space for art work and fully intend to start drawing and painting again very soon.

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