To Have and Have Not

While I have a new studio, as yet I have not moved the contents down the garden to fill it. It’ll be an exhibition gallery for the visiting public over the next three weeks, though I will be doing printing demonstrations in there as well. I have however started to clear out the old studio ready for departure.

I stripped out the contents of my plan chest yesterday. I was lucky enough to inherit this from Ben’s grandfather via Ben’s parents who, in defiance of every in-law cliché going, support and help me with amazing kindness and generosity. The plan chest was full, now it is almost empty and I am filled with righteous pleasure. I think there are two sorts of people: the keepers and the keep-nots. Like my dad, I love getting shot of things. Out went my college work (though we have a definitive copy of every print. At the risk of showing off, so does the National Library of Wales Print Collection who acquired a set of my final project work) and lots of grubby paper, acetate and card in what I can only describe as groovy colours. This came with the chest and dated back to Ben’s parent’s art careers in the sixties and seventies. Casualties included dead beetles and a lot of fluff, probably from the thirties; beneficiaries included the men at the dump who were cheered considerably by my huge life drawings of naked ladies.

I have kept a few things including a Pirelli Calendar by Terence Donovan which is filled with African women, curvy and unimplanted, from the days when it was OK for models to be naturally beautiful. I also kept my pen and ink drawings from the streets of Soho. I spent a lot of time sitting, dressed in practical army surplus, on the pavement there in the early eighties and the drawings are a splotchy record of the days when Soho was a cheerfully smutty and run down law unto itself, far removed from the smart streets of today.