Creative pursuits
My interests and passions are very ‘hands on’ and practical, and I have never been keen on talking about them, rather hoping the work would speak for itself, but with no people around in the depths of the countryside, who will see it? Here’s my Website with Artworks and arty stuff.
Now it’s time to make more art, show and promote it myself using the amazing power and reach of the internet and in the process, help other artists to succeed with their art online. That’s marketing – the latest venture for this Jack of all trades.
Online Opportunities are everywhere for Artists to sell their work and I am learning more all the time. If you would like to follow the journey and learn from the process, keep up with me on the social sites and, better still, sign up to my newsletter:)
Over the years, as well as running my Picture Framing business I have made paintings and prints, illustrated books and painted murals. I love gardening and I’ve also done a lot of DIY, fixing up my first house, which was in London, helping with a house in France and finally tackling the house I’m living in now, working from a caravan for the first six months and no outside doors for the next six months. We had swallows rearing their young in our hall!
Background
Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I spent my childhood years in East Africa, moving with the family to Portugal at the age of twelve. At sixteen I set off for England to Study Art.
I didn’t know you had to apply the year before! I didn’t know anything about how the education system worked, so when I was told the score at the information desk of Guildford Art School I just exclaimed ‘But I want to Learn Now!’ and they pointed me to the adult education classes. They were free to someone of my tender years.
I found myself in a strange world where I was In the Art School, but not At art school, learning life drawing, painting, sculpting with clay and all sorts of other odd day time classes with all the old folk. Well, I thought they were old – I was only sixteen. I worked at night washing up to pay the rent for my shared bedsit.
One of the tutors encouraged me to compile a portfolio of all the work I was doing. Lucky for me… It was on the strength of that porfolio that I got in to the Foundation course at Wimbledon School of Art the following year.
After leaving Wimbledon Art School I worked in various offices in the building trade including an architect’s firm and later, spent several years making reproduction glass paintings for a private company.
Self Employed from the start
In 1978 I opened my first shop with two other artists in South London. We made decorative painted mirror frames, painted furniture and other objects. When my friends moved on, I started doing bespoke picture framing and gradually built up a thriving framing business and Gallery known as Outlines.
Naturally, I met aspiring and established artists in the course of my framing, exhibited their work in the gallery and had many discussions about how difficult it was to get work ‘out there’.
Enter the Internet or the ‘World Wide Web’
The Internet was born about that time – I had avoided using a computer ’til I heard about that. I wondered about them, did I have time to learn to use one with a full time business and painting at night? I wanted to wait ’til they could cope with making pictures and Everything. I resisted until my friend pointed out that they came with a retractable tea-cup stand! (The cd disk drive).
I was sold!
Many a sleepless night followed in the months after the purchase of that first computer. I didn’t even know how to save a file. I looked things up and learned from lovely sites ‘how to make web sites in html’. And I made a little website for my gallery and framing business. I wanted more practice, so I made more little sites – on my site – for artists I knew. Just portfolios with plenty of pictures and a bigger image. I just made them and told the artists they could use them to quickly show potential galleries a range of work without having to lug so much stuff around.
I didn’t expand on that, I had a busy framing business to run and plenty of customers from passing trade and recommendation.
A Big Change
And so it continued through the years until I moved home, business and studio to North Devon in 2005.
Now, this beautiful place has much to offer, but someone like me is virtually un-employable and I am far from towns and cities, so I turned to the internet again. The game had changed and there is more to do now in order to get seen, and more ways of making an income from a website.
So – back to school. Ha! but whose advice was worthwhile and correct? It’s a minefield out there.
That’s a separate story:)
My hope and aim is that my experiences can help other artists avoid mistakes and make informed choices when building an online presence.
Thanks for reading
