I have been painting and creating art for many years. It probably seriously started around 1992. Friends were away at various Art Colleges having fun and being students. I figured I to could create some "abstract art", I guess my mind had previously been in a traditional art mode. At the time I was working in the steel fabrication industry. Days in dark foundries, blistered and burnt hands from showers of molten metal. I lived alone in a three bedroom house, I had the room to experiment creating random sculptures and two metre square abstract paintings which hung from many of the walls. I had the space and the freedom to experiment. My aim was to train myself in technique and style to enable me to "escape" the unhealthy work environment breathing in toxic fumes and an enclosing future.
I enrolled on a Art "A" level course at a local college. I passed with an A+ grade using an abstract project based on circles. ( I have recently "dug up" this project again and I am about to embark on the next, more mature series of investigations. The details will be in a future post.) My results encouraged me to take my art further and after a couple of years studying and practising in my spare time I managed to get a portfolio of paintings together.
1995 I left Sheffield, sold my house, left my job and enrolled at the University studying Visual Art. Three years focusing on the study of Art, meeting like minded people and exposure to many creative methods. I enjoyed, excelled and revelled in the luxury of freedom and potential. I filled sketch books galore, made films, learnt photography processes, experimented with ceramic sculptures and studied various art philosophies.
My eyes opened, my brain adsorbed, my intellect focused. I knew that I needed to be a creative artist. The years previous to my university days I had always had that artist eye, the weird viewpoint, an interest in the unusual, a quirky taste. Photographing walls because of the colour relationship of the bricks. Creativeness is part of me and it runs through my veins.
The Shark-Headed Man
54 x 72 cm
acrylic & conte on paper
Un-Themed gallery art4oka.com
He is fascinated by the changes he is going through.