My fledgling career as an artist began inauspiciously at the age of 3 years old, at that time the front room at Baillie Towers boasted some wallpaper with a chinese style motif of traditional houses somewhat similar in design to the ones you would find on a Willow pattern plate. At some point I got hold of a pen and drew smoke coming out of various parts of the roofs that I believed were chimneys... mistake! My dear mother (ever the strict disciplinarian) came in took one look at the desecrated wallpaper and gave me a sound leathering.
Still, it didn’t put me off and my parents seeing my obvious inclinations towards pens & pencils laid in a goodly store of drawing pads and steered me away from the walls of the house! I never did it again so maybe there is something to be said for mild corporal punishment!
I started learning to read before I went to school and used to enjoy looking at books, magazines, newspapers, comics, anything with pictures. In fact the first picture I ever remember taking any real notice of was a cartoon in the Daily Mirror, It was a cartoon to do with the execution of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann who was executed in June 1962 and showed him walking towards the gallows on a pathway made from human skulls. I remember trying to copy it but not being particularly satisfied with it, my sketchbooks quickly became full of gibbets and attempts at skulls.
Another fascination for me about that time were sailing ships and galleons, my mother had a biscuit tin with a pirate theme showing south sea islands, buried treasure and a sixteenth century galleon with huge lamps at the stern and billowing sails.
I started to realise that I could draw better than other children when one day I was doing one of my galleon pictures at school and one of the other kids tried drawing one as well. His efforts compared to mine were quite pathetic I thought? his sails were completely flat as though the ship was becalmed whereas mine were full of wind. His attempt at perspective were awful, why couldn’t he see what I could see?
