Early Days - From Teesside to Paris and Back

I was one of those toddlers who never slept and one of my earliest memories is getting up at 5am to start drawing…

My mum is a keen artist and I'd copy her, and copy pictures from my dad's bird books. At school I had a really kind teacher (Mrs Scott) who encouraged my love of art and even bought me my first set of watercolours. I was using the original palette until very recently, when it gave up it's 40 year battle with rust.

Fast forward a few years and I was at Cleveland College of Art enjoying an excellent foundation course. We did lots of technical and life drawing as well as more expressive mark-making. I remember drawing an old Singer sewing machine and copying the beautiful illustrations on the side.

Sketchbooks were so important and my dad would take me to a place in Redcar called South Gare to draw and paint. The blast furnace was still going and it was bleak and smelly and really exciting...

With Paddy’s Hole one side and the Tees estuary on the other, I was spoilt for choice, and this was when I first started to properly love watercolour painting…

During my time studying Graphic Design at Leeds Polytechnic (another excellent course) I spent 2 months living in Paris, staying with a lovely family in their tiny apartment. It was what my dad would call “character-forming”. A beautiful city but I was so lonely! It led to some quite self-indulgent sketchbook entries like this one, a self-portrait in my bedroom.

Also, lots of out and about drawing in the Jardin de Luxembourg…

So lots of drawing and a bit of travelling saw me through to the end of my degree. I’ll let you know what happened after that in my next blog. It didn’t go smoothly…

Thanks for reading!

---