…. rather like the legendary experience of the drowning man. Actually, all I was doing was finishing the sort-out of my old art files. Today I had the opportunity to look carefully through the portfolio of very old material, which I left until the last. It has been a remarkable experience in a number of ways. I had forgotten altogether that I had ever made several experiments with abstract art. (I can see why I quit!) I am encouraged to think that it would be worth my while to get back to painting portraits. They range from a self-portrait of me as a student, I think in 1962, through several sketches of my first wife, to a rather nice little study of a grand-daughter, completed (at a guess) about ten years ago.* There are experiments with wood-cut prints, which I did with a group of kids, using scrap-wood because the organisers of the course hadn’t budgeted for any expenditure on art sessions. A collection of Christmas cards documents my fondness for doing my own thing, and avoiding the combination of commercialism and sentimentality which often characterises these things. A surprising feature of this early material is the relative lack of landscape, which has been a central feature of my work since I took up art properly in 2002. Have I worked my way out of that now?
Given the fact that the context so much of this early material is my former marriage, it is not surprising that reappraising it today has been an emotional as well as a “critical” experience. I have been impressed also by the continuity of my commitment to art. Although during some periods the thread of artistic activity has been rather thin, I have been made aware of the fact that, however, committed I was to my academic career, there was always a continuing thread of art, insistently drawing my attention to itself from time to time. At the personal as well as the artistic level, I like to think that I am now where I am supposed to be.
*She graduated this year!