Taking Liberties

Whenever I find myself slouched in the corner of a bar talking beery bollocks about art with my fellow sufferers, one theme seems to rear its ugly head more than others:
The delicate balance between following your creative dreams without becoming a starving waif.

It's a ticklish problem.

The challenge is keeping yourself afloat without completely selling out and making coasters with pictures of sad kittens on them.
Maintaining the spark of what makes you creative in the first place whilst simultaneously being commercial enough to indulge in extravagances like bread and socks takes ingenuity and cunning.

On that note it's probably time to introduce a collection of images, some of which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog:

http://www.gettinguptostuff.com

This is the stuff that happens when you stop worrying and just do the things that you care about, need to do or simply feel like having a bash at,  and it's the antidote to all the work that has to be done to pay the bills.
I haven't put my name to it simply because I don't want it to become just another commercial endeavour that requires publicity, explanation and the endless pursuit of egotistical promotion.
The stories are more important than the author and for once it's not about trying to be recognised.

In the meantime, the ever present need to replace some dangerously ancient socks has seen me using those same skills to keep the piggy bank from dropping a dress size.

The lovelies at the Thekla (special mention to Chloe) needed a DJ booth makeover and something large and eye-catching for the annual New Year's bunfight, and these were the result;

So maybe that's the answer.
You keep going, doing the best you can to buy the time to do what really matters to you and if you're really lucky, sometimes the two things go hand in hand.

And it saves you having to get a proper job.

Bucket List

Mine was not an ordinary childhood.

At the age of ten I refused to comply with the school dress code and opted for a tie with the Taj Mahal on it and a deerstalker hat ( I was going through my Sherlock Holmes phase). When the school    insisted I comply I did, but wore my mum's false teeth to class as a protest.
I was threatened with 'consequences' when they found me singing rude songs in a cemetery and I  nearly drowned my friend Derek when I entered us both in a lifesaving competition even though neither of us could swim.

In fairness though, it has to be said that I did not come from a normal family.

My father ( a respectable white collar engineer with a romantic, nostalgic nature and a very selective approach to the law) was an unpredictable mixture of traditional values and bat shit crazy revolutionary tendencies.

When they shut the local railway station he decided that it was our civic duty to rescue as many historical artefacts from it as possible for the Nation, for future generations, but mostly for us.

Our first acquisition was a large red fire bucket which made it out in broad daylight under his coat.

After that, it sort of snowballed.

Lamps, signals, twiddly Victorian iron things with knobs on and even on one occasion part of a locomotive which he somehow wrestled into the boot of the car and couldn't lift out when we got home and the adrenalin had receded.

We became Ninja-like, stealthy and expert at scuttling about in the dark with large amounts of things that nobody else wanted stuffed up our jumpers.
There were a lot of redundant  railways, and a lot of 'liberating' to be done.
In fairness to him, all of this stuff would have been bulldozed into a ball and dumped in a landfill site, but that wouldn't have formed much of a defence if we'd come within the boney grasp of a local magistrate.

We covered a lot of ground and amassed a considerable collection of toilet door signs, bits of railing  and other fabulous examples of railway related tat but there was one site that eluded us:
On his way to work each day he passed an almost forgotten station that, although technically closed, lay within the grounds of the local racecourse with all its attendant security.
It was just too risky, but it bugged him that all those Great Western toilet roll holders and monogrammed boot scrapers were so close and yet so terribly far away.

I loved, and hated these midnight walks on the wild side, with the risk of capture and the thrill of getting away on our toes with yet another rusty prize.
Most of all, though, it was about me and my dad getting up to stuff together.
We walked for miles along abandoned tracks, the cuttings thick with Rosebay Willow Herb that grew wherever ash and cinders from long gone steam trains lay.
When we spotted the constabulary waiting by our parked car, we hid our loot in the bushes and wandered back as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a father and son to take a stroll at two o'clock in the morning dressed entirely in black.

Looking back, I can see now how much it has influenced me today, and I'm grateful for it.
"Show me the bug eyed weird ten year old and I'll show you the man" etc.

My dad, like all those old stations and pilfered plunder, has gone now.

He loved the romance of old railways, and I loved that he shared that with me.
I buried his ashes by a track leading to the cottage he and my mum rented when they were first married.
Escaping from war torn Glasgow, and a selection of dragon-like mothers, they hid themselves away in rural Hampshire.
He worked away all week, but Friday would find him on the last train home.
The image was one that lived with him to the end and when he captured it in a poem, he inadvertently gave me the clues as to where his last call should be.

I'd planned to keep some of him back though, but for that I'd need a fire bucket...

I found the very thing at my first attempt, on ebay.
An original railway fire bucket in need of a lick of paint - "it's in the garden, put the money through the letterbox".
The house I collected it from was, unbelievably, in sight of the racecourse station.
A little part of him is in there now, and the Rosebay Willow Herb I planted seems to appreciate him too.
Cheers dad, it was a blast.

Yet in my heart those ancient trains

Will run while memory remains,

For when I worked in Gloucestershire,

On Friday nights (in their last year)

To lamp-lit Wickham, down the line,

Would come a train, entirely mine,

And Northbound, into growing night

Would spangle Hampshire fields with light.

The whistle yelped, the chimney spoke,

And owls and drowsy duck ponds woke:

A dry ditch sloped up from the lane,

And through a cornfield, trodden plain,

A path led to my week-long dream

Of high red roof and window-gleam:

"Infuse the tea-he's home again!"

And she would bless its sound and fly

To fetch a hero's apple pie.

Ian Stuart Alexander

The House of Dog

How many times have you walked past an abandoned church and thought " I wonder what they did with the vicar?".

No?, maybe it's just me then...

They have sanctuaries for donkeys, greyhounds and woodlice (probably) so why not one for abandoned clergymen?

Perhaps there is a farm somewhere out in the country where retired vicars are free to frolic, running in slow motion through cornfields, the wind blowing through their cassocks as they taste freedom for the first time.

It can't be easy for them.

A lifetime of ministering to wizened old coffin dodgers who smell of peppermint and dust and baptising babies that look like Gollum's elbow takes a special type of parson, and being shunted into the ecclesiastical sidings at the end of it all must be difficult.

I have a mental picture of them lined up in their hundreds like redundant penguins, hoping someone will adopt them and offer them a new life where it's ok to say 'bum' and wear an egg stained tracksuit without people writing to the Telegraph.

In the meantime, some daft bugger has put a little tribute to our brothers of the cloth in the cages outside the old St Nicholas church in Bristol.

Nice to know someone shares my view.

Shadows Part 2

Redemption
"The action of saving or being saved from sin, error or evil"  (OED)

When a story finds me, I follow it .
Sometimes, however, it leads to places I would rather not go.

On  June 10th, 1944 at Salon la Tour, near Limoges, an SS Panzer Division set up a temporary base.
Halted in their rush to Normandy to engage the Allied invasion by the activities of the local resistance, they set up roadblocks and began a search of the surrounding villages.

This was the web that Violette Szabo was caught in, but she was not the focus of their attention.

 Helmut Kampfe, a battalion commander, had been captured by the local Maquis, and executed.
On discovering his fate, his friend and fellow commander ordered a reprisal of staggering brutality designed to stun the local population into obedient complicity.

Even by the standards of the day it was a horrific reaction and had he not become a casualty of the war shortly after, he would have faced a court martial for his actions.

 Entering the village of Oradour sur Glane his troops gathered the entire population of 642 people, separated them into manageable groups and murdered them.
The women and children were herded into the church and killed, and the whole area looted and burned.

The village has been preserved intact as a memorial and a shrine to these, and other victims of a systematic destruction that we struggle to comprehend.

Visiting it now is a strange experience.

Tourists in summer clothes walk round its frozen tableau in respectful silence, amazed at the sewing machines still left on decaying tables, bicycles propped in sheds and ancient cars slowly collapsing into rusting heaps.

People entering the church take care to soften the sound of their shoes on the flagstones for fear of disturbing the silence, as if the air itself was charged with the horror of what took place here.
A small boy is reprimanded for asking what happened in a normal tone, as if the enquiry is insensitive and disrespectful.

But there is another aspect to this place, which nothing can prevent.
Despite all their efforts to freeze this place, time and nature have conspired to reclaim it.
Birds do sing here, and flowers grow in the corners not cleared of new growth by the site's curators.

There is something uncomfortable about the need to promote the pain and suffering that took place here with no respite, as if only by provoking us into imagining children dying in fear and pain can we learn from history.
Everywhere are signs encouraging us to remember, but remember what?
It is too huge, to vile and too far from my experience to comprehend, and the site itself has a life of its own now, like an abandoned film set.
A survivor of Auschwitz, on returning decades later was heard to say "It looks so lovely now."
What she saw was ordered tidiness and lawns where before there had only been frozen filth, and she struggled to connect it with her recollections of her time there.

Maybe those who follow have an obligation to keep faith with these times and places but in a way that allows redemption and offers a place in our world now.

I returned the following morning to pay my respects and offer an alternative.
I wanted to celebrate what had been here before this happened, and take a moment to try to imagine what things were like when this was just a place where children were daft, and made a noise, and ran about and laughed.

It only took a few seconds to float some childish bubbles through the burnt out shell of the church.
A few seconds that was about hope, and fun, and life.

Security did not agree.

I left, stung by their disapproval, and made my way out through the visitor centre where, for 10 euros you can buy an account of the massacre at Oradour, complete with photographs of charred children's corpses and pornographic descriptions of their suffering.

I think they deserve better.

Shadows Part 1

Where do you begin with the past?
How do you bridge the gap between human experiences then and now and why should it matter?
But it does matter.
It matters a lot.

In October 1942 a little girl named Tania lost her father to the war.
Sometime around Jan/Feb of 1945 the same seismic convulsion claimed her mother too.
She has grown up with no memory of her father, and only two fleeting recollections of her mother, and yet her whole life has been accompanied by the legend of her mother's heroism.
Even if she wanted to, she can never escape the iconic status of her legacy.
For her, the past still defines the present.

There are books, a film, even a museum to Violette Szabo, and like Joan of Arc she has been passed into public ownership as a national heroine, a poster girl for the appalling conflict that shaped my parents generation.

Her story is almost unbelievable, and not helped by post war flag wavers who couldn't resist adding layers of sensational speculation and inaccuracy.
The truth is available now, 70 years on, and no less extraordinary.

Married to a French Legionnaire she had known for only 6 weeks, she was widowed at 21.
He died at El Alamein 4 months after the daughter he would never see was born.
Violette was inducted into the Special Operations Executive, trained like a commando and sent into occupied France to work with the Resistance.

Everything about her story is tinged with a terrible, tragic romance.
The coded poem she was given to memorise is both touching and hauntingly prophetic in the light
of events.
In photographs she looks so young, so beautiful and so resolute that it's hard to separate her from the image history has bequeathed her.
And yet she was just a girl who married, had a child, joined up with all the others who were eager to do their bit and tried her best to survive the nightmare.

On her second mission into France, in support of the Allied landings on D-Day, she was travelling as a courier between two resistance networks when the car she was in was stopped at a roadblock.
She and the driver, a local Maquis leader, made a run for it but it was already too late.
They escaped through a farm but a damaged ankle slowed her down and she was forced to stop.
She held them off for half an hour with a Sten gun which gave her companion time to get away but her capture was inevitable.
At that arbitrary spot on the map, and in that twist of circumstance, she was lost to the darkness.

After the war her daughter, now aged of 5, was taken to Buckingham Palace to collect her mother's posthumous George Cross from King George VI, and the world moved on.

                                                         ------------oOo-----------

It's just a junction on a country lane on the outskirts of a quaint but unremarkable French village.
It's hard to imagine roadblocks, the sounds of gunfire, and shouting, and running feet.
Most of the cottages are owned by Brits now, and since the best of summer has gone, so have they.
Little has changed here in seven decades, though.
The farm looks the same as it did then, as do all the other features that figure in the evidence of a drama that happened so, so long ago.
I've made images from old photographs of mother and daughter and try to catch their shadows in the afternoon sun but the clouds roll in, the rain falls and the light fades.
Did I really think I could make something happen here?
What on earth was I doing, trying to pull the past into the present, chasing ghosts down blind alleys and hoping for significance where it no longer existed.

And then the lights on the farm buildings come on, and there they are, together.
For a brief moment they are in the same place, at the same time, their shadows as real as yours and mine.
And in a moment, they are gone.

We are not a muse

On November 16th, 1899 Queen Victoria arrived in Bristol to open the aptly named Queen Victoria Jubilee Convalescent Home, a place where Clifton folk of a delicate disposition could recuperate after the shock of seeing a poor person.

Her visit was a trigger for one of the greatest displays of patriotic excess ever seen in the city.
The profusion of Union Jack bunting was so extreme that one commentator was moved to express the view that "John Bull himself appears to have vomited over the entire conurbation in an outpouring of red white and blue appreciation".

The route from the station was lined with scarlet jacketed soldiers, the good citizens of Bristol cheered her every inch of the way, small orphans were thrown under the wheels of her carriage to muffle the sound as she passed over the cobbled streets and everywhere the crowds thronged in a joyfully throngy way.

The highlight was a carriage ride across the downs where a 300 yard stand had been constructed to accommodate 26,000 children singing the National Anthem at her. Amazingly, she survived although locals reported hundreds of squirrels dropping dead from the trees.

She stayed just long enough for tea and buns, kissed a few dignitaries and shook hands with a baby and then it was back on the train to be home in time for a quick chapter of her favourite book; " How to run an Empire whilst looking like Alfred Hitchcock in a frock".

My, how times have changed.

These days the Royal Family has to smile at everyone and even stand quite near ordinary
people sometimes.
They have to appear both regal and in touch with the riff raff all at the same time for fear of being criticised as just another bunch of foreigners living off the state.
There is much debate over how much they cost, whether they should get proper jobs and why they don't buy their tiaras at Argos like the rest of us.

I have to say, it's not a job I'd want, but then I'm no good at dressing like my grandparents and I couldn't eat a whole corgi so I probably wouldn't qualify anyway.

Now, however, the world has turned full circle and Her Victorian Majesty, Empress of India, Mother of Nations and Upholder of the Stiff Upper Lip has returned to Clifton.

At least this time she's making an effort to offset her expenses and demonstrate that she can handle change.

If you can spare any...

Rising Tide

It's 5.00 in the morning.
The sun is tinting the sky, the sea is bathwater warm.
It's a perfect Mediterranean morning, the coast of Sicily is Bond-film beautiful and the shoreline, devoid of basking tourists, is timeless, ethereal and all mine.

I wade out into the dark water with a handful of votive lights, a lighter and a benevolent attitude.
I was hoping to do something worthwhile, profound but aesthetically pleasing; somewhere between a protest and a postcard.

And then it all goes wrong.

This was supposed to be a modest, respectful moment to acknowledge the people who try to cross this great blue barrier to a better life. Robbed by the unscrupulous in their own countries and resented by the inhabitants of their destination, they risk their lives for a glimpse of all that we are fortunate enough to take for granted.

And sometimes the sea takes them.

From the comfort of a lucky birthplace, we look on and try to make sense of it.
Would I gamble my family's lives for a place at the wealthy man's table if I was in their situation?
All I know is they wash up near to here sometimes.

What I thought was seaweed turns out to be jellyfish.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, attracted by the pinpricks of light, each sting like the touch of a hot iron.
I scramble back to a tideline rimmed with their stranded hordes, pulsing like tiny aliens on the shingle.

The tea lights cluster in the swell, attracting plastic bottles, paper and nameless flotsam as they drift.
My image of a flotilla of carefully choreographed candles dancing on a pristine sea, lit by the rays of the dawn is disappearing fast.

Slowly they join the tidemark of rubbish that the sea coughs up each morning, the unsightly evidence of our disregard.

I photograph it anyway, and there it is; the metaphor has beached itself at my swollen, stinging feet.

Every morning, before the sun worshippers arrive, the beach is swept of all the ugliness and unpleasantness that no one wants to see.

No one need concern themselves with the sea's darker harvest, let alone the Evian bottles and plastic shoes that cluster at its fringes.

I come away sore, disconcerted and slightly ashamed.
Floating a few tea lights on the morning tide isn't going to change a damned thing, or begin to address the enormity of lives lost, but doing nothing at all seems worse.

The sea is a dangerous place, even if you're only in it up to your knees.

Tender is the night

It's got a lot to do with the time of the year.

Cold days and long dark evenings do tend to bring out the gloomy side, and it's
hard to skip through meadows extolling the joys of creation in a duffle coat and wellies.

The weather makes me introspective, and I find myself dwelling on the more serious side.

The passing of the seasons reminds us all that we too are mortal, and one day our time will be up.
It would be easy to get morbid about all this, but the sensible thing to do is treat it as a reminder to get on with things and not waste time.

Reviewing some of my escapades over the last year, it's apparent that quite a lot of it had more than a touch of the glums about it, so  the thing to do was lighten up a bit and get out there with something a bit more cheerful.

With that in mind, and conscious of the fact that I will one day look back on all this and ask myself some pretty searching questions about how I'd spent the years, I set about doing something creative with the bins.

The bin men refused to empty them as "they contain material not specified for that container"
i.e. teeth and eyeballs.

Oh well, you can only try.

Turfed out into the cold

Bristol is brilliant.
It's one of the few places where people actually look for ways of doing jolly things that make the city more fun.
Even the sensible people who did their homework on time and ended up in the council offices have been known to smile benignly upon delightfully daft projects involving water slides on main roads, public pianos and lampposts that cast someone else's shadow as you walk under them, (which is damned clever and a bit freaky).
The problem is there are just too many people with nifty ideas, and not enough opportunities or funding to get all this wonderfulness out there.

The locals have neatly sidestepped this by simply doing it anyway.

Not for them the approval of lofty Art Institutions, the warm feeling of civic recognition or the intoxicating celebrity of getting in the local free paper.
They operate in a twilight world of anonymity, their only reward being the knowledge that someone, somewhere will see their efforts and assume it must be art students mucking about again.

Which brings us to the tricky issue of graffiti.

Even if you're not a fan of having your fence scribbled on, and have forgotten how much you disapproved of that local bloke until he got famous, it's reassuring to know that there are industrious souls out there with an opinion, who have done something more with their evenings than watch singing apprentice bakers on ice-skates crying in rich peoples gardens.
I like the clever stuff, and the constant overpainting means it doesn't outstay it's welcome.
Like all the best jokes, timing is everything.

Some seem to linger like sad reflections on us all, like the large name on a wall I often pass.
Whoever painted it had grand ambitions, as the letters are huge.
Unfortunately, he could only afford one can and his attempts to colour it in get fainter as he progressed, tailing off in a sad little sputter.

A bit like life....

Walking through an abandoned churchyard this morning, I was met by this recumbent figure.
Next to him was a pot of daises, so I planted one about his person and had a little think about some of the people who I visit now only in memory.

There was no official plaque sanctioned by the Arnolfini or the Tate, no endorsement from those who would choose our art for us or instructions as to how we should view it.

I hope it doesn't get taken away too soon.

 

Baptism of fire

My father died in February.
Going through his papers, I found photographs, documents and articles about a largely ignored, but extraordinary event from the very beginning of the First World War.
I had known the story as a family legend, but here was the first hand proof of what took place.

War was declared at 11.00pm on 4th August, 1914.
The following morning a Royal Naval task force set out from Harwich, lead by the light cruiser
HMS Amphion, following reports of a German ship laying mines in the North sea about 30 miles from shore.
My Great Uncle Robert, as signals officer, was on the bridge with the captain and three other officers when the enemy ship was engaged and sunk.
The surviving German crew were rescued and brought aboard, and the ship turned for home.

At 6.30am on August the 6th, she hit one of the recently deployed mines, the foredeck exploded in a fireball and she began to sink.
Great Uncle Bob was blown into the water, his face and hands badly burned, and survived by swimming under the leaking oil from the dying ship before being picked up by one of the accompanying Destroyers.
Within 15 minutes she was gone, along with 167 men including all but one of the German prisoners.

Great Uncle Bob, along with his brother George, had joined the Navy as boy cadets and risen through the ranks.
Photographs of them reveal tough, muscular men with twinkling eyes and rough hands.
Both had distinguished careers, retired with handsome pensions, a chest full of medals and at least one MBE.
It would take more than a few mines to sink either of them.

The other brother, Melville, was my Grandfather.
He was altogether a gentler, more artistic sort who had survived both TB and a broken heart as a young man, and been left ashore to look after the aged mother.
On hearing of his brother's injuries, he took rooms in Harwich so that he could visit Bob every day at a Naval hospital across the bay.
One evening, whilst waiting for the ferry, he was spotted idly writing a postcard under a gas lamp and promptly arrested as a spy.
Things weren't helped when they went through his pockets and found a sketch of a battleship that he'd dashed off that afternoon.
The guard was called, and he was marched throughout the town by a squad of soldiers,
bayonets fixed.
Jeered and spat at by an angry crowd, he ended up in the cells of the Redoubt, an old Napoleonic fort then serving as the local military headquarters.
In the transcript of his interrogation, the sergeant of the guard asks him for his occupation:
"I make pictures and write stories" he replied...
After an anxious night on an iron bed frame, he was finally released back into a world that had only just begun it's descent into madness and loss.

Largely ignored by history, the sinking of the Amphion appears to involve the very first British, and German casualties of a war that would go on to claim millions.
There are no headstones, no memorials, no visitor centres, just a tiny x on the charts to mark the wreck site.

At 6.30am, on August 6th 2014, at a point on the same latitude as the Amphion's resting place in the North Sea, I marked the moment as best I could.

The sea is a cruel, lonely place that leaves no evidence of past conflicts.
Time means little out here, and a century is just the movement of the waves under passing clouds.

I never met my Great Uncle, but I hope I have honoured him.

Ever feel like life's become an Escher drawing?

Blues singers get it.
Country and Western Yeehaws have been known to articulate it.
Even floppy haired 60's beat combo fops in frilly shirts strayed into the arena now and then.
I'm talking about the down-on-your-luck, nobody-loves-me, life-ain't-fair lyricists who remind us all of how pointless it can be to keep paddling in an endless sea of disappointment, rejection and futility.

Songs like ' I started out with nothing and I've got most of it left' and 'My wife ran off with my best friend and I really miss that guy' are like anthems to the dispossessed.
Some people, when they fall, hit the ground like a dropped pie whilst others seem to view hard flat surfaces as trampolines to help them bounce higher.

Me, I'm somewhere in the middle, sort of rubbery but fragile round the edges like a badly cooked bat.

I made a real grimley of the last portrait.
It's still a touchy subject but suffice to say it was a lurid combination of v.attractive singer/songwriter, charity fundraiser, impossible (self imposed) deadline - um, 5hrs?! -and a Lot of Awkwardness.
Lead balloon, fart in a spacesuit, Susan Boyle at the Commonwealth Games awkward.
I'd have had a better response if I'd presented her with a shit in a bottle.

Ooh, the lessons learnt...

Anyway, moving on:
My dad met my mum in 1940, when he was barely out of school and still very interested in model aeroplanes.
My mum was a bit older, and was more impressed with chaps who smoked pipes whilst doing the foxtrot, so dad had to come up with something special to catch her eye, so he carved a perfect little plane out of a single piece of wood and presented it to her.
It must have taken him hours, but the shear devotion of it won the day or I would not be here to tell the tale.
( I think it was a one off. Can't think of a single woman I've ever been able to impress with whittling skills. )

I think our family tree was the sort that bears nuts.

 My grandfather spent  years creating amazing contraptions, intricate models and delightful paintings in the face of hostile disapproval and a lifelong pressure to "knuckle down and stop messing about with arty hobbies" but the things he left behind which I treasure most are not what he earned his daily crust from.
The painting I found recently in an attic connects me to him because it allows me a glimpse through his eyes, even though it was painted 116 years ago.

It's about allowing yourself to dream; about not listening to the voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough and about getting up more times than you fall down.

Amen

ps. To restore my dented crust I'm off to Dr Sketchy's Big Birthday Drawing Bash on Sunday 27th.
Nothing beats a class full of arty dreamers and outrageous Burlesque models who definitely know a thing or two about bouncing.
Maybe see you there.
I'll be the one in the pork pie hat.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Sketchys-Bristol/509275919119867

Dr. Sketchy's Bristol

www.drsketchybristol.co.uk

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

I've only got myself to blame.

Having decided that the only way to get anywhere is to throw yourself at every possible opportunity that even glances in your direction, I now have to follow it up.

Last year Sky Arts filled several posh buildings with bug eyed, sweating portrait artists.
Under the watchful eye of the public, a northern comedian, a pretty lady in saucy shoes, a friendly thin man and a stern  woman you wouldn't accept an apple off if you met her in the forest, they were made to paint pictures of celebrities looking uncomfortable.

Ultimately, a groovy hipster with runny paint turned in a very tidy and respectful picture of a heroic soldier and everyone went home feeling pleased that nobody had done anything controversial or unpleasant.

Well done him.

His prize is a large bag of cash and the chance to paint a famous author who, with the best will in the world, does look like a Bushbaby staring at the back of a spoon, but hey, a win's a win.

There was much in the show to point at in outrage, and there were moments when my tea came out of my nose but all in all it was a Good Thing because it got portraiture out of the attic, dusted it off and encouraged people to think about it a bit.

I felt sorry for the artists who got publicly voted out, and even sorrier for the ones who got through and had to actually talk about their paintings to 'the experts'.

Trouble is they're doing it again this year.

They insist on your entry being a selfie, so I've had to spend today looking at myself in the mirror like some mad narcissistic budgie, but it's got to be done.

Like Unlucky Alf, I can feel myself wobbling towards the metaphorical hole in the road, and knowing my luck, I'll probably fall into it.

Any road, 'ere's me entry.

Bugger...

It takes balls to be a Drag Queen

Never a dull moment.

I first met Ryan at a photoshoot that was all about fabulous ball gowns, outrageous make up and spangly shoes.
It was obvious he was in his element.

We met again at a Dr Sketchy drawing class, where Ryan was one of the models.
This time he was in full warpaint, huge wig, figure hugging skeleton dress and an attitude that made the her in him into the patron saint of PMS.
Ryan is tall. No, I mean really tall, as in really, really tall, but in heels he is a danger to aircraft.
I'd arranged to meet him beforehand to find out who he is when he's not being Ryan, and a who he is when he is.
As I drew him, he emerged as a lovely, confident guy with a lot of caring, sensitive attitudes who just happens to like morphing into a loud, outrageous Diva bitch monster on a regular basis.
What struck me most was how logical, reasonable and fun that seemed.
At the risk of getting too clever, maybe there's a streak of that in all of us, it's just some of us haven't got the legs for it.

Anyhoo, he became  my 'face of the BP Awards' on the basis that entering national portrait competitions is about as wildly optimistic as sending Putin a T-shirt with a smiley face on it that says 'Love thy neighbour' and expecting him to buddy up with the Dalai Lama,  so you might as well send in something a bit bonkers.

This, then is what is going on a trip to London, where it will pass before the dead, doll-like eyes of the judges for about 1/60th of a second, before being spat out and sent back to the Shires where all the wannabe artists who nobody's heard of live in bucolic resignation.

Basically, I don't think they'll like it. They may not even notice it, which is worse.

Thing is though, it doesn't matter,

I use competitions as deadlines, a false line in the sand that provides the pressure to get on with it and not faff about.

And I got to meet another amazing person.

Or two...

Are you looking' at me?!

Painting pictures is a tricky business at the best of times.

Dabbing coloured goo onto fabric with a hairy stick in an attempt to create a recognizable image, such as a bowl of fruit or a particularly handsome cat, is an activity that invites frustration and failure.

Compared to portraiture, though, it has one redeeming aspect: it’s virtually unheard of for a bunch of bananas, or Tiddles from next door, to offer an opinion on your efforts.

The thing is, everyone has a very private view of their own appearance.

No matter how long you stare at your reflection, it’s always back to front, and that’s before we get to the issues of which expressions we’re comfortable with.

Add to that the layers of  complexity that form the encyclopedia of our self awareness and the whole thing becomes a bit of a challenge.

So, do you paint somebody as they see themselves, or as you see them?

Phil is a man who rarely troubles his mirrors for an opinion.

He and I travelled across Scotland together, and during that time I saw him a little more clearly in the grey, Celtic light.

His story is both commonplace and extraordinary, a mix of great good fortune and teeth-clenching adversity that would have driven a lesser man to his knees.

Every man has a mountain to climb, and for Phil it was Ben Nevis.

We gave it our best shot, but as a metaphor for life it proved less than cooperative, and we conceded defeat, backed off and went to the pub.

Several months later I got a call.

Against the advice of the medical profession, his horoscope and his own common sense, he had gone back, and was now standing on top of the biggest bump in Britain.

I painted him as I saw him then.

He’s too modest to recognize himself, but in looking at his own image he may see himself as others do.

I sincerely hope so.

Meanwhile, back at square one...

I've never been one for following the herd.

I'd much rather find things out for myself than sit quietly amongst a crowd of supplicants listening to some windbag demonstrating their superiority in the naive expectation that you will somehow be inspired to emulate, but never exceed, their abilities.
You will have gathered from this that I was not a huge success at school.
I'd rather blaze a trail than trail my blazer.

All of this gives me a warm feeling of maverick integrity and daring independence, but the passage of the years has revealed that it is also an extremely long winded way of going about things.
If I'm going to make it as a portrait artist before they measure me up for some Grampy Pampers, I'm going to have to get a wiggle on.
Against all my instincts, and through gritted teeth, I'm going to have to ask for help.

Andy James is Vice President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, but let's not hold that against him.
He occasionally runs courses designed to help aspiring artists so I coughed up, locked the delicate ego in the cupboard under the stairs and joined in.

Mercifully he turned out to be a genuinely nice bloke, a top rate painter and a good teacher to boot.

Now it's not easy making the transition from illustrator to painter, and old habits die hard.
The temptation to employ all the clever tricks and effects that have got me through the last thirty years is strong, but whilst they might impress some observers, they're a dead giveaway to any artist with 'Vice President' on his notepaper.

Suffice to say the experience was a tad humbling, highly informative and ultimately inspiring.

So, armed with  a more 'muscular' style, a new set of techniques and the confidence to paint direct from the live model without cheating, it's off into the big wide world to put it into practice.

Here's a peek at some of the exercises he put us through, against the clock and with no safety net:

So what next?
The BP awards are on again, as is the Royal Society open exhibition with a deadline for admissions in Feb.
I'm going to have to have a go, but it feels a bit like being back at school sitting for an exam.
Except this time I can't forge a note from my mum.

Different strokes

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."

That's one of those handy catch-all's that we tell ourselves whenever we're confronted by our instinct to run a mile from anything unfamiliar.

The thing is it's only when we leap joyfully into scary situations that we discover what comes next.
Ok so far; nice concept.

The problem is actually doing it...

I've been attending Life Drawing Classes on and off since the last Ice Age, and over the years I like to think I've developed a style that gets me past those awkward moments when you realise someone's looking over your shoulder.

It's not just the model who feels naked.

Now I know what you're supposed to say - "you're not creating a finished piece, it's a working drawing designed to educate your eye"etc. but I've never completely got over the slightly gladiatorial sensation of working in public.
Shallow? possibly.
Insecure? Definitely, and not something to be proud of, but a rather British part of me tends to cling on to a drawing technique that works and gets approving grunts from my fellow artists.
Stuff like this:

Which is all very nice and fuzzy, but inevitably leads nowhere as I'm repeating what I already know rather than attempting something exciting and new that might actually move me on a notch.

Which is why I found myself in a crowded bar full of pencil grippers the other night, waiting for a nice lady in a Beetlejuice costume to unfold herself in front of us.
If you've never been to a Dr Sketchy's anti art class, you've missed a treat.

Check them out on:
http://www.drsketchy.com/branch/bristol

Hosted by Miss Lou-Leigh Blue (she who modelled for a couple of paintings for last year's exhibition)  it's a wonderful blend of Burlesque, beer, theatre and art and definitely no place for a formal approach to anything.

No point in playing safe then, so I loosened the corsets and went for it with a piece of broken chalk, a £1.99 notebook from Tesco's and a devil may care glint in the one eye that can focus further than two feet away.

And surprise surprise, I surprised myself.

Long labour, pain free delivery

Funny thing nerves.

It took me nearly two years to finish this one, which is pretty shameful really.

I lost track of how many times I put it back on the easel, resolved to finish it, bottled it and turned it to the wall again like a guilty secret.

Somewhere in the back of my mind was the sneaking realisation that it wasn't the painting that was inadequate, it was me.
I knew that if I painted it further down the line, it would benefit from the time I'd spent improving.

Self awareness is a wonderful thing, and it's good to be honest about your limitations as long as it spurs you on to greater things.

Two years, and a lot of trial and terror later, I had to face up to the fact that it was finished and would have to be delivered.

I'm no stranger to standing before the critical eye of the fee paying beholder, but it's different when what you're presenting is such a personal statement about both you and the sitter, and I'm not ashamed to say I was bricking it.

Hard nosed corporate heavyweight though he is, Peter came up with the sort of instant response that makes you feel the world isn't such a bad place after all.

Painting people's stories, their lives, their complexities is an extraordinary mix of objectivity and intimacy.

All I've ever really wanted to do was create pictures and make people laugh and cry.

It could be I've found a way to do all three.

No news is good news

About a year ago I held an exhibition because I was angry.

Five years previously, a group of young men with the strength of adults and the judgement of spiteful children beat up a 'mosher' for no reason other than to exercise their aggression.
When his girlfriend intervened, they turned on her and killed her.
In their minds they were entitled to single out victims for recreational violence, and anyone who got in their way invited the same treatment.

It made me angry then, and it still makes me angry now, mainly because I'm powerless to do anything about it.

Painting a few pictures, raising a few quid for the charity, inviting people to think about it comes a poor second to the significance of what happened.

For those close to Sophie Lancaster, that moment will walk one step behind them for the rest of their lives.

Fast forward six years to the Harbourside Festival in sunny Bristol.

We all meet up and have the sort of day that you'd expect.
A mixture of young and old, youthful exuberance and grown ups being daft; music and beer and telling people whose names you can't remember that you love them  ( "but not in a funny way..." ).

We all go our separate ways, but later on two of our group walk into trouble.

It's the usual depressingly familiar scene of hate fuelled violence.
Ugly, relentless and dangerously out of control, the victim incapable of offering resistance.

By intervening, the son of our family friend broke the flow of the attack but in doing so made himself the target.

He wound up with a few bruises and a chipped tooth, but he'd defused the moment enough for others to assist, for the violence to fade, for help to arrive.

It's entirely possible he saved a young man's life.

He's off to uni now, his future bright, his smile restored thanks to the wonders of modern dentistry and his cheerful enthusiasm undiminished.

There's no headlines in the paper, no Daily Mail tub thumping about "Broken Britain Ruled By Thugs", no bedside vigil, no need for charity fundraising, no moment when the clock stopped.

There's nothing to report.

And that's as good a reason as I can think of for painting someones portrait.

Fairy Nuff

When I was knee high to next door's dog I used to pull my toy soldiers, knights, zoo animals, farm vehicles and tanks to pieces, chuck them in the toy box, pull the components out randomly and make weird, hybrid creatures out of them.

I think my favourite was a cow with a gun turret that towed a caravan.

I also wore a deerstalker hat and a tie with the Taj Mahal on it, but that's for another time.

The end result is that I get terribly, childishly, even ecstatically excited when I find myself in one of those fancy reclamation places that sell bits of old toilets and stuffed squirrels.
The last one I encountered had everything a ten year old could want, including swords, a Russian T34 tank (running order, road tax exempt) a Cruise missile (honest! no warhead though) and the clock from Crewe station.
In fairness, I was never your average ten year old.

I inevitably come home with 'stuff that will come in handy one day', which in the past has included the back of a broken chair which I was sure had potential.

So when a Designer Chum of mine offered to do a swapsy of a portrait of her daughter for a leaflet design I had the frame sorted already.

Not so bonkers after all then....

Apart from that, it's been business as usual.
I spent an amazing afternoon with two incredible belly dancers which has provided plenty of material for the next round of paintings ( sketches as shown ).
These are, hopefully, going to be a lot looser and dynamic, ( the paintings, not the dancers, wash yer minds out ), as fits both the style of dancing and my desire to get a bit more life into the paintings.

And finally, the very beginnings of a portrait of an exceptional guy whose story is worth telling, and whose portrait is most definitely worth painting.

Pretty obvious it's early days on this one, but when it's done I'll tell his story, make his mum proud and embarrass the living marsbars out of him.

Still, at least he's not wearing a deerstalker.