15-05-2023

BATTERSEA

STUDIO

In many ways I don’t have a particularly thrilling backstory. I’ve lived in London all my life and there aren’t many things I follow passionately other than Tottenham Football Club. For those who don’t follow football, supporting Tottenham can be a tough gig. Being nice, I’d describe it as a bit up and down. Although the ups don’t necessarily equate to ‘success’.

From as early as five years old my weekends revolved around playing competitive football. Training on a Saturday afternoon followed by a competitive game on a Sunday. Off the pitch, I was an avid viewer of matches broadcasted on live tv. If there wasn’t a game on? I’d be in the back garden kicking a ball at a brick wall. With both feet I’ll add. I’m not ambidextrous as some conclude.

In spite of my love for football I used to hate the build up to a match day. A Lucozade sport and a Mars bar for the journey would help calm the nerves but as a kid I was incredibly pessimistic and in turn, shy. The beauty of pessimism, It made me a great central defender. I wasn’t particularly strong or tall but I was always complemented on my ability to ‘read the game’. Body positioning, watching the eyes, all the fun stuff.

Secondary school marked a turning point. I had played for the same football team since I was six years old and a large percentage of our team went on to play at academy level. I however developed a love for video games and sugary snacks. My skill sets were still acknowledged by coaches but my lack of fitness and inability to communicate on the pitch let me down. A teenager now, I was still unable to work out my shyness, whilst something about devouring the entirety of 30p packets of custard creams through school lunchtime made me desperately unfit. Fortunately I got into my secondary school on the basis that I was also quite good at drawing. To be more specific, I made a portfolio of flower sketches that caught the eye.

All well and good except being a self expressive artist was way out of my comfort zone. As opposed to being the kid that drew flowers, half decent footballer felt like the easier persona to adopt through school. It's not quite the equivalent of being a jock over in America but It did allow me to go under the radar a little in the face of bullying. Emphasis on ‘a little’ as some saw through my facade.

Many a custard cream later, I left school with little idea of what I wanted to do. By the time college came around I had blocked out the idea of being a ‘creative’ and taken Maths, Physics, Geography and Psychology at A-level. Perhaps the main detriment to my school work was my love of Call Of Duty (video game). If I was to hesitate a guess at my time spent video gaming, over four separate call of duty games I recon its close to 1440hours. Hence, my final exam results weren’t the best. The joints before lessons at this point also probably didn’t help. Although when high I was a little less pessimistic and a bit more step overs and flicks in PE football.

Whilst most then went on to university, I left school and worked a full time retail job in Halfords. My only triumph. I managed to keep up a range of bad habits throughout. Extensive days out at the skatepark my favourite past time. I continued smoking weed, video gaming, kicking footballs and stacking shelves for the best part of four years.

I slowly grinded away my coping mechanisms (skatepark joke) until my addiction to weed was the first mechanism to malfunction. Eventually I experienced a string of panic attacks which were attributed by doctors to my weed smoking habit. At that point I felt I had no option but to quit. It soon became clear that I didn’t require a substance that made me more self aware. Quite the opposite, alcohol became a fitting replacement. I managed to work up the courage to leave my job at Halfords and began working in a pub. A brave transition….

Part time to begin with, I had some time on my hands outside of pouring pints. In conjunction with my love of unlocking camouflages for guns on Call Of Duty, I also developed a keen interest in streetwear brand Maharishi. As a result, I purchased a long list of items from the brand that on my wage, I probably couldn’t afford. Most impact fully, I owned a pair of camouflage trousers that featured a repeating leaf pattern. A pattern which proved to inspire my first piece of art. Nothing more than an intuitive idea, I looked to create a camouflage pattern on canvas with a sense of depth. Inadvertently reuniting with my love of drawing from the inspiration of plant life.

In truth, it was a fairly sporadic reunion. My time was still mostly spent video gaming and sinking pints. Then covid came around and everything changed. Given time to think and paint I fell in love with…. No, I spent most of lockdown video gaming. Fortnite was now the game of choice with occasional breaks spent building homes on Minecraft with the boys. All the while, still living at my family home making my fair contribution to the toilet roll shortage. Thankfully, there was a silver lining. In moments where I managed to take a break from video gaming I completed two pieces of art over lockdown. The second piece is a design that even today I haven’t strayed far from.

During lockdown (When the rules permitted) I frequently cycled a route which took me from my home in South London to St. James Park in Central London. There, I engaged in a book on hyper empathy that had been recommended to me. No idea what I was getting myself into, I ended up spending most of my time reading in tears. Various attributes of myself that I had deemed negative began to feel a little different. My shyness was beginning to make sense and somewhat seamlessly I met my first girlfriend. The single most beautiful person I’ve ever met. Inside and out. Well mainly inside at this point as lockdown was still in full force.

Lockdown a strong catalyst we were living together after a fairly short period of time. I was drawn away from the comfort of South London to a guardianship (legal squatting) in Kings Cross. We lived in the kids playroom of an abandoned ENT hospital but I wont get into that. Much to the dismay of my mates I decided not to bring my games console on the voyage. As you’d expect, I subsequently began to put a lot more time into painting. At this point I moved away from working on canvas to using gouache paints on paper.

Minus a leak in our roof that the landlords didn’t fancy fixing, there was a long period of bliss living in Kings Cross. Except an opportunity eventually came our way that was hard to turn down. Through no doing of my own, me and my then girlfriend were presented the opportunity to move into a two bedroom flat in Soho on a new build affordable housing scheme. Apparently even in the centre of Soho there is a certain number of homes which have to be on the market at a council flat rate. Given first dibs (through my then girlfriend’s job), we were incredibly fortunate to have landed on our feet where we did. I continued to maintain the same pub job in South London but there was a new sense of optimism that came attached to living in the heart of the city. Lockdown had unlocked and all of a sudden I was along way a way from organising warehouses in Halfords.

Simultaneously I received my first large scale commissions. Back on canvas, the first was a remake of one of my original paintings. The second, my first camouflage pattern on canvas which incorporated straight edges. The commissions came at a good time and so I continued to paint during a lot of my time off work. Permitted I wasn’t engaging in bad habits.

Anyone whose worked behind a bar will know it’s easy to find yourself drinking more days than not. Long shifts require a beer after work. Slow shifts require a beer during work. Activities on days off, of course, require beers during or are enhanced by the promise of a beer afterwards. Living in Soho it became hard to resist the urge to visit the first hand array of drinking facilities. Come one o’clock the view from the flat usually consisted of men in suits parked outside the pub for lunch. If they can do it so can I right? Maybe, except in reality I was on close to minimum wage and undoubtedly couldn’t afford the fairly consistent expenditure of seven pound on pints of Gamma Ray.

Not to worry, It wasn’t long before I was put back in my place. I spent just over three months living in Soho before I was dumped and asked to move out. Labelled the ‘right guy at the wrong time’, it was hard to digest considering the recent decision to rent a home together. Tougher still when later told I lacked bravado. Perhaps the pints of Gamma Ray were a fitting choice of beverage. As a Spurs fan I'd take third in the hierarchy to be fair.

That’s where the studio comes in. two years deep into my pub job by this point, I’d built a really good relationship with a regular drinker named Paul. Paul is a prop designer and has worked from a workshop in Battersea for close to thirty years. I asked Paul and Paul only when I went looking for a studio space (rather ambitiously) and it proved that he had a small room in his workshop that had been collecting dust. As a result, I quit my job behind the bar and come August 2022 (a month after my breakup) I was moved in.

At the time of writing I’m just over a year into working from the studio. I’m not one to get ahead of myself but as I look to be a bit more optimistic, my first love in Tottenham FC are uncharacteristically top of the league (Hasn’t aged well). As for my second love. I feel I still have a lot of work to do before I become the man I should have been a year ago.