My Time as an Art Student - Fun, All Round

So there I was a young and enthousiastic art student setting out on my 2 year initial study, relishing learning how to make lithographs, etchings, draw and paint... Loved it all, Even managed to survive my first life drawing class – not a young and beautiful naked model but a hugely fat youngish woman.

Actually I discovered very quickly that bodies such as hers were much more interesting to draw than the slim and sexy ones. All those wonderful curves, lines and sagging flesh was a joy to draw. So that turned out to be a source of great creative pleasure to me, and I spent the better part of one year doing nothing much other than life drawing, which I loved and found gave me a great understanding of form and line. A very good experience indeed.

These are the only photos I can find from my time at Croydon art school.  Here we had made a long roll of newspapers, and then solemnly carried it through the centre of Croydon, and then "killed" it.  No idea why though.

We were very lucky in that a young man called Alan Jones was our lithography teacher. At that point he was very successful in the art world, and produced wonderful lithos and paintings, full of colour and life, and was also a truly good teacher, sympathetic and technically very capable. Gave us a really good start in that rather enjoyable way of creating images... A love that stayed with me thereafter. And was only about 5 years older than we were, which helped too.

We also had a splendid man to teach us drawing. A fellow called Charles Keating. A much older guy, time worn and deeply cynical about the world at large, and a sort of raving Marxist as well. So when the weather was seriously bad, he would get us all out of the art school and into a train and haul us all off to what is now called Docklands, but in those days was a real functioning dockland. And then positioned us one by one on the coldest and windiest street corners he could find, and told us to draw.. draw and draw some more. Refused to let us wear gloves, saying that the freezing wind would help us to avoid being fussy with our drawings, and instead go for the important lines in the scenes in front of us. In this he was of course, totally correct. So we all ended up with extremely soggy sketch books full of what were actually rather good and useful drawings of that extremely working class and run-down part of London.

There was one thing that amused me there. Often I found myself inside the docks, near to ships being unloaded. And on one occasion it was a freezer ship, and huge sides of beef were being carted off the ship by the dockworkers who walked away from the ship in a line and disappeared around a corner. I followed them to see if they might be good to draw, and discovered that there were a fleet of freezer trucks there, into which the sides of beef were going – except for about 1 in 10 of them, which were disappearing into the back door of a cafe.....

A couple of days later we were back there again, and I found that the stolen beef tasted really good, as I ate my lunch in that cafe.

Nothing further of note occurred in my life in this period, and in due course I graduated from that art school and got a place at St. Martins School of Art in London, to study sculpture under people such as Tony Caro, Philip King and a whole raft of sculptors who were famous at the time, the pointy end of British art in those days.

There I spent two happy years welding chunks of steel together, and living the typical art student's life in the centre of London. Generally a good time. Lots of girls in my life which was an education in itself and fun for the most part. We mixed with the art world's greats of the time, went to openings, parties and so on with the cultural world of London... and all the while produced great quantities of superbly mediocre art, and loved life with a passion.

On my first day there, all us new students were gathered together in the Sculpture Department and given a sort of welcoming speech. The main thing that I recall from what was said to us was the following good advice:-

“You may talk about anything you want while you are here – Except art. Talking about art is only for those who can't make it – You are here because you think you can make art, therefore don't talk about it, make it!”

I rule we observed faithfully, and only discussed motorbikes, girls, food and other non-art subjects. Actually it was good advice, we were highly productive as a group of art students.. mostly total crap, but we produced it in enormous quantities....

Curiously enough, the one thing I really remember from that art school experience was meeting Spike Milligan one day in the entry hall of the school. I was talking to one of my teachers, who I discovered was a good mate of Milligan's, and suddenly there was Milligan, a very tall and stooped man, we chatted for a while, and then Milligan asked the way to Charing Cross Station, my teacher told him to go out and turn right, so Milligan rushed out and turned left and disappeared in the crowds... An odd man.

I also became friends with one of those superb English eccentrics who pop up from time to time, a Mr Bruce Lacey, who was an artist who created all manner of odd robotic art and environments. A really pleasant and intriguing guy to talk with (if you are interested in his work, simply Google him). He lived in a small semi-detached house in London, and had – as one does - a stuffed Camel in the hallway.

My favourite work of his was a sort of robot that had arms that grabbed you and hugged you to its chest if you got too close to it. Loved watching that happen in the Bond street gallery it was shown in...

During this period in my life I became friends with several members of a strange dance band called The temperance Seven, who played music of the 30's rather well... They were all teachers in various London Art schools.

I enjoyed this period of my life a lot, but come the day I had to leave the cozy world of art school I realised that actually I was a pretty awful artist, and had about as much hope of making a living as an artist as I did of becoming the Pope.

So the next part of my happy saga was about to begin..... A time of considerable ups and downs.....  All of which shall be revealed unto you in a short while.