‘Here I am : John’ | 30x40in | Oil on canvas
This painting came after about a year of painter’s block, not to be confused with writer’s block. I don’t mean I didn’t paint for a year. I did. All day, every day. But absolute utter shite. I was stuck in the grey in between trying to make art that I thought would sell and not standing my ground with what little clients I had. I probably spent about a year of my life painting backs of peoples heads. For the first time in my life I actually started getting migraines. if failing fast was my mantra at the start of painting again, that year was an epic fail.
I think when you work by yourself and on a path that has no rule book or guidelines, it’s really easy to lose perspective and motivation. Painting all the time for little to no ‘pats on the back’ or monetary reward at the start can be debilitating and a bit paralysing. I had so many ideas in the year but would always stumble back to what I thought would bring me success. Another thing I found (pre Instagram) was that Artists (not all, but a lot I encountered) would be a little fuzzy with transparency. This made things difficult in terms of trying to figure out what I was actually striving for and how to get there. Meeting Ishbel Myerscough for the first time (after fan-girling her work since I was a teenager) was a revelation. A totally down to earth, insanely talented Artist who was really generous with her time and gave me a lot of great advice in a non advice let’s drink endless amounts of tea and just chat about life kind of way. very grateful for that.
After endless days of trying to train my brain to not go around in circles with ideas I wasn’t totally in love with, I did the most basic thing. I started to paint what I know. I’ve always been drawn to older generations. Maybe because I never really had Grandparents - they either died before I was born or when I was too young to really notice. So I started to paint older people who I knew. It goes without saying that an older face aesthetically for me is the most enjoyable subject to work with but trying to immortalise their character in paint is my ultimate hope.