Hi, and welcome to my website. I hope I can amuse and interest you while you are here. I'm going to be writing a series of short posts about things I end up thinking about art and related subjects. While it may not be to the tastes of all, and I'm not even sure that it'll have any great artistic merit, I feel the need to talk about this stuff, and when you've got your own website, why the hell not?
In the interests of transparency, I feel it's important to say up front that I'm not sure I qualify as much of an expert. Like most people I'm a curious and self-motivated enthusiast, but there are quite a few definitions of 'artist' that would mean I dont count as one.
As you'll see as I write in later posts, that I certainly do call myself an artist, and I'd very likely call you an artist too.
I should say that I have no academic background as an artist. I grew up in Glasgow, (Scotland, for those of you unclear) and though that city has a storied and highly accomplished art school, I had almst no interest in it.
My mother is an artist, as well as a musician, and she was forever providing craft materials, especially themed decoration making around the holiday times. It's not to say that I didn't entertain myself as a child drawing near constantly; after I saw Willy Wonka for the first time, I spent god-knows-how-long designing the looks and the characteristsics and wrappers of my own preferred variations on sweeties. After I saw Star Wars for the first time, I could not be prevented from trying to draw plans for an AT-ST (for those not up to speed with Star Wars – despite its age and ubiquity – those are two-legged walking transport vehicles machines).
At school I was uninterested in art generally, though I was beginning by the end of Fourth Year to have been exposed to technical drawing. In Fifth year I actually took a Higher in Graphic Communication, I liked it and did, well, only OK. Out of school I became more and more interested in drawing more properly. In Sixth year I took an Int 2 Art, because I was prevented from takeing a Higher by a petty and self-interested art teacher. We won't get into that airing of personal grievance for a while, maybe never. I am sensible that there are very few artists without a chip on their shoulder about an art teacher.
Beside my mother, I think probably the other greatest influence was my general love of fantasy and science fiction, and more specifically, Games Workshop and their detailed, paintable miniatures.
I was halfway through a degree in Microbiology and Immunology when I realised that I was seriously interested in doing more than doodling in the margins of essays on genetics. It came as only half-surprising to me when I discovered a serious interest in art. I did finish the degree, though it was a stuggle to maintain interest, because I thought it would be more 'employable' than art. I still thought then, that art was a wishy-washy, flighty, flaky thing for precious snowflakes to talk about abstracts.
As it turns out I have made more money (still not that much at time of writing, it has to be said) and made more friends as an artist than I have as a scientist, and talked about some pretty concrete things. To be clear, if you're reading this, dear friends, I count you much dearer than money.
After university I thought of myself more and more as an artist, still conflicted that I wasn't a proper artist, and certainly not helped by the several strange older men who, upon seeing me drawing in public places, decided to offer unsolicited advice along the lines of :
"That's not art you're doing, that's illustration"
or
"You're really bad at doing faces, you should learn how to do them before you do anything else"
I'm glad I never took them to heart, but if you should ever find yourself in such a position, you should remember how destructive your words could be. It might have ruined my beginnings of confidence, and while I was fine, someone else might not be. Worse, I have been guilty of the same – the insensitive joke, the sneer before thinking. Those are among some of my more serious regrets.
It makes me wonder if we might not all be influenced heavily by our tormentors and detractors. It makes me think that maybe those people and their terrible, unwanted advice probably received the same or worse, to make them think that this was how things were done. Or maybe they were oblivious, arrogant tossers who where dense enough to think they were helping.
In 2013 I moved to Aberdeen to move in with my now-wife Vicki, and my unemployed streak continued. I'm very glad for the dole, or I'd never have had the time to work on my own stuff. I'd have been too busy raiding bins for food, we were so hard up. I've become a better artist in the time since, improved really very rapidly – better in the technical, experience sense, and better at using my imagination, better at discussing my ideas. Of course, I still don't count myself even particularly good as an artist, small fish in an ocean. But I was able to grow at least somewhat, and rapidly.
And here I am, having thought about things enough that I finally want to talk about them. I hope you'll want to keep reading, I've got a store of things to talk about, and you might find that it gives you some ideas, or at least, my talking about it reassures you that you're not the only one experiencing things.