Starting with the latter, first.

I foolishly did one of those DNA tests that explain all the ailments you are experiencing in the now, and the ones you have to look forward to.

It also gives you a potential D-day, mine is pencilled in for 2033 which is great news for any potential investor of my artworks but sad news for the brewers, distillers and the grape farmers that have enjoyed my patronage.

Puberty and beyond

However, let us go back to the beginning. I was born so therefore I exist. I never had a plan, all I ever wanted to do was paint, so I did, but not enough. The urge to eat and drink took precedence when I passed puberty, especially the drink. After serving my time as a heraldic artist I eventually found my way to art college where I had the time and the inclination to painstakingly paint away in my imagination.

I travelled the country working in various design groups and advertising agencies before setting up my own in my hometown.

I love all art, from caveman to Koons and enjoy visiting art galleries around the world, especially European ones, in the Flemish lands and particularly in Gent and Bruges.

One of my most surreal art experiences in a house of art was while I was stationed in Hong Kong. Whilst whiling my time away in-between client meetings, I was alone in the outside café of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, sipping a cup of coffee, surrounded by fog, while the ships’ horns played in the harbour to the sounds of Elvis Presley, swooning away over the tannoy.

I wondered. Is this life imitating art or art being ridiculous? I’ve always been drawn to the ridiculous and the ridicule of those who deserve it.

The Flemish knew a thing or two about ridicule and I would stare for hours at cheap prints of Bruegel's, admire the complexity of Bosch and the latter surreal genesis of Magritte and Ernst and co. Now, fortunately I’ve had the pleasure of seeing many of them in the flesh.

And it’s the beauty of these artisans of a bygone era that later drew me to painting in oils. I was and I am still in awe of their brushwork, composition, and boundless imagination. It also gave me the opportunity to paint larger pieces, but at heart I’m still a minor miniaturist. Previously I had mainly painted in gouache.

Back to the future

As an adolescent I would read about the early surrealists and Dadaists barking like dogs in their garrets for their own amusement, sending off offensive letters to the Pope in the full knowledge they would never be caught. Imagine doing that nowadays to you-know-who...

How they found the time to paint I don't know. Or perhaps I do.

I felt at home in their heads, imagination let free of conventional norms and self-censorship not getting a look in. How different in these dark days where self-censorship is the scourge of our age. The bureaucrats are boringly back with their withering self-importance, stifling the glory of the human condition, and the joy of the unexpected.

Some of my work I simply start at the top left and work to the bottom right with no rhyme or reason. Others are complex stories where I know what every stroke is about before I open a tube.

I’m now trying to get my head and brush together in my twilight years in a final charade.

I hope you enjoy them. Sorry to have gone on so much, but I’ve been on the planet a long time.

If I’m here after 2033, I will return and say hello.
Paul