in a past life

IN A PAST LIFE

I could draw. A little bit anyway.

Scrunched up on my bed with it's patchwork quilt, a pile of soft toys at one end and a collection of hand-sewn cushions at the other. My pearlescent white 'ghetto-blaster' pumping out tinny renditions of The Smiths, Billy Idol and The Cult. I really did call it a 'ghetto-blaster'. This is despite the fact that my corner of green and pleasant England is about as far removed from a ghetto as it is possible to be. I never saw the irony in it, but then I was only 17.

My desk was a kitchen tray, precariously balanced on my knee. The tools of my trade were Staedler fine tip pens and some cheap paper that dad brought home from work one day. Cheap paper, but BIG sheets - A1, I think. I used to fold it into A3 sheets and work on those. The ends always fell over the edge of the tray and I had to keep shifting it across to keep a solid surface beneath me. Sometimes I had to work upside down or at funny angle. But I would rather do that and remain in happy solitude in my room than sit at the infinitely more practical but infinitely less solitary kitchen table.

I would work from anything, and in fact I had a file full of clippings from newspapers and magazines of pictures I wanted to draw. Nothing was sacred - advertisments, record sleeves, photographs. Everywhere I looked I saw something. I just didn't have the time to do it all and that was a source of eternal frustration.

Sometimes I would draw in pencil, sometimes with those Staedler pens I favoured. Sometimes I had to use fabric and thread. I can remember being awake until dawn broke on several occasions - I has copied the whole album sleeve from Queen's LP 'A Day At The Races' and was embroidering it in satin stitch on a denim jacket for a school friend. It took me about 4 months to finish it, and it was a work of art when it was completed I haven't seen that friend for about 18 years now and I wonder if they still have the jacket. I doubt it.

I dreamt of being an artist. I took art at school, along with creative textiles, and yearned for a creative lifestyle. I failed both exams and cried for a week, all hope squashed flat. No-one understood why I had failed, especially not my teachers who pushed me to appeal. But my heart was broken and my confidence shattered.

I kept the drawings, carefully laid one of those posh artists binders that my parents bought me for Christmas one year.

I've never been able to throw those drawings away - they represent something to me, even if I can't identify exactly what it is.

The portfolio has been tucked away at the back of my wardrobe and yesterday I pulled it out and opened it for the first time in about 10 years. On the back of each is a small pencil mark showing the year I did it. All my work stopped when I failed those exams, and I haven't picked up a pencil or pen to draw since.

I can remember quite clearly working on them. They are made up from thousands, if not millions, of tiny tiny dots. I had such patience back then. Patience, good eyesight and hope.

Marilyn Monroe. I think you can tell? I was reading a book about her life and the original photo was taken the day she announced her divorce from Joe DiMaggio. The mum of one of my friends loved this so much that she made me photocopy it for her and she still has it hanging in her house to this day.




This was taken from the sleeve of a Def Leppard single - 'Animal', I think. You can see a tiny mark on the white in the centre - I dropped a piece of chocolate on it. There are also a couple of smudges where tiny drops of something - probably Diet Coke - made their way onto the paper. And there's a patch of red in the midst of yellow that shouldn't be there. I wasn't concentrating and can still remember how annoyed I was when I realised I had picked up the wrong colour pen.



Minx may well recognise this. It was the album sleeve from Genesis, 'Wind & Wuthering'. Never finished, as you can tell by the pencil guidelines that are still evident. The tree is, I think, my favourite part of this - you can't see it so well here, but that too is made up from clusters of tiny tiny dots. The trunk is hundreds of tiny lines.



Morrisey from The Smiths. I liked him, I liked their music, hence I drew him.