An early clash with authority in 1991

Below, an early painting on paper, roughly A1 size, produced in about an hour, from life. My then teacher, Frank Collins, back in 1991, at John Cass school, objected to my use of thick charcoal outlines, although he let the fingerless hand go unremarked.

Frank did not want me to join the pre-degree course, since I came in mid-way through the first year , and he thought I might not catch up, although his colleague, and the better painter, Peter Saunders, had no such qualms. Frank also told me there and then that he thought that my paintings were too conventional for his taste, and for my own good, if I wanted to make any headway in my future career. Much the same was said by another member of staff within days of my joining the degree course. She asked me why I, as a mature artist, wanted to enrol at all. The aim of the school , she said,was to find the next exhibitor at the Whitechapel Gallery, which is just across the road from where we were sitting. Clearly I was not going to make it. In short, material success in the shark-infested art-world is largely about novelty, fashion, self-promotion, and marketing. Undirected talent comes well down the list. All I can do is paint for myself, and no other, and hope for the best.

Peter is an interesting man, a one-time Slade prize-winner, who at that time painted oil-rich gestural interiors and landscapes, particularly of the Kent coast, reminiscent of Bomberg, but more vibrant, with a better colour sense, and just as memorable.