ABOUT


'Man in boat' Rosie Kearton 1962
Recently, the painting above that I made around the age of 16 years, came back into my possession after hanging in my parent’s home for many years and standing wrapped up in storage for a few more! It is 50 years old. I have no memory of painting it and have been curious to delve deeper into how it relates to my life now. I am recording my responses using different processes but not painting, at least not at the moment. I am not a painter and only used oils when I was at school. But the medium is only one way of looking at it and during reflection I have realised that it has a deeper connection than I initially thought! It got me wondering how about the connection between artwork we produce when we are young and our creativity in later life . So I sent out an invitation and a brief to take part in the project.

The brief: 
Many artists talk about the influence of childhood passions and the impact of this creativity in later years.

“It takes a very long time to become young.”  Picasso

Take a photograph of an artwork you created as a child or young adult and submit a jpeg image (maximum 800 pixel width) and write not more than 100 words on the significance of this artwork in your life now, does it connect to you, the way you work or how you see the world? Or you may feel it has no significance at all. It can be a story, in the form of a poem, a piece of prose, or just random words and as conceptual as you like
 – it could even be an image of a current artwork if you feel the connection speaks for itself! 

What surprised me was the number of people who had no artwork from their childhood, it had been destroyed, mislaid, lost or somewhere, who knows where, in the contents of  the many boxes in the attic. The deadline for the project has now closed and I have included the 14 participants who were able to respond to the brief in a book. However this blog will continue and people will be able to continue to participate by commenting or adding their own artwork.