Writing

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace. It just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. There is now a term for this type of image – “Knolling” or “Flatlay” and you can find the fascinating origin of this nomenclature here. The memory of this Exhibition (or Exhibit if you are American) has never left me and in addition, the BBC produced a series of programmes (now available as a podcast) A History of the World in 100 Objects, or in book form if you are not able to download from the BBC.
This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

If a Writer is a person who writes then I may consider myself to be a writer but if the same stricture were applied to being an Artist, then I could not claim that title, at least not on a regular basis. Of course, writing is an art form, but there was a time when I did seriously consider the possibility of becoming a “Fine Artist” and for that matter, I briefly considered studying to be an Architect. I decided against being a painter because I saw even at 16, how the art world works – you find a gallery that likes your work and they promote you until you want to do something different in style and then they say “No! Do more of what sells!!!” (Unless you achieve the stature of say, David Hockney and then you can do whatever the hell you like!) So you must submit or starve in a garret… A slight simplification, but enough to put me off going down that road. As for Architecture, I took out a book from the library whose first chapter simply said “So you want to become an Architect?” and the next chapter, with even greater brevity, said, “Don’t!” It then went on to outline the seven-year process of qualifying as an Architect before you really enter the workforce and have to find your own path. The same logic caused me to reject joining the Royal Air Force at 16 because even though paying your way through University and attaining a pilot licence were tempting, there was no guarantee that you would be fit to become a fighter pilot at 21 and who knows what else you might end up doing – perhaps not even flying at all – uh-uh!

But having spent the first paragraph of a sort of memoir saying what I didn’t choose to do, I did continue to be an artist on and off and I have worked in Architecture to an extent, and so this first post of the 2025 A to Z Challenge celebrates these two areas of endeavour by me. How did I even get into Art? Well in 1968, my father took a sabbatical year from his post as a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Oxford and spent two terms as an exchange lecturer at the University of New South Wales. In 1968 it was cheaper for a family of five, plus my Granny, to go by ship than to fly to Australia, and so we had a world cruise thrown in. Four weeks around the Cape of Good Hope, because the Suez Canal was closed due to the Six-Day War, then six weeks across the Pacific and via the Panama Canal back to England. Needless to say, this was a mind-expanding experience for a fourteen-year-old on many levels, but one thing that happened had far-reaching consequences. We disembarked the ship in Perth, Western Australia and spent two weeks with some relations on a farm near Bunbury. Growing there we encountered Paper-bark Gum Trees that like all gum trees, shed their leaves continuously all year round and so are in effect, evergreen but they also shed their bark and as the name implies, the Paper-bark comes away in wads of multi-layered tissue-thin, varicoloured bark ranging from red, through browns to white and even black if bush fires have blown past the tree. Later in Sydney, we visited a gallery where some artist had collaged paper-bark along with oil-painted sky and lake. My mother criticised this combination and felt hat with the palette offered by the paperbark, oil paint was unnecessary. My father challenged her and said that if that was the case then she should demonstrate it for herself. So our relatives in Bunbury duly sent a parcel of bark and together with dried seeds, leaves, moss and suchlike, she collaged landscapes which were well received back in Oxford. She next set about organising weekend exhibitions on the University Park railings and for several summers we children had to spend every weekend sitting at the exhibition. Eventually, I decided to have a go myself and produced and even sold a few there. You could saunter up behind people and earwig on their comments and I came to learn a universal truth about art – Even if You the Artist Do Not Like a Piece – There May Be Someone Out There Who Thinks It’s the Bees’s Knees!

Later, I found it necessary to stay on an extra year at school and not having a full timetable, decided to add Art and Geology to the Geography A-Level I was re-taking. Yet still I had only 11 hours of timetabled lessons and so I was allowed out of school to visit some of the great museums and art galleries of Oxford. I discovered the Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum (a kind of mini British Museum) and if they weren’t too busy, the staff would sit me down with – wait for it – boxes of Turner watercolours (5) or a box of Thomas Girtin’s work (a friend of Turner). I doubt whether they would allow such things today, but these boxes of old masters’ work had a direct influence on my own efforts for which I am eternally grateful and I can still visualise the luminous paintings of Venice by Turner, to this day… However, for the reasons already given, I decided not to pursue Fine Art and yet I have, from time to time, got my paints, or other mediums out ,and made an artworl or two, so here are some of those pieces…

And what of Architecture? I had studied Technical Drawing at school and I occasionally produced some illustrations for my father’s work and although I was heavily influenced him in many ways, I was not strong enough at maths to follow him into engineering and despite his disdain for architects generally, he admired Frank Lloyd Wright who made his students go out into the desert and build their own buildings. And so, briefly, I considered Architecture until I read “that book” Instead, I eventually worked as a jobbing signwriter for many years – an applied art, where you get to develop your own style and inject a modicum of creativity into every job – more of that in later posts. However, in a life-changing moment, I broke my hip in a car crash, spent a year on crutches and could no longer work up ladders so a change of direction beckoned. A friend of mine in Ireland, where I was living at the time, got me a job part-time, teaching Modelmaking to Interior Architecture students in the Engineering Department of Sligo Technical College (now a university I believe). Nothing fancy like finished building models but rather, how to think in 3D – so lots of cereal packets and Sellotape! Whilst doing this, I had the chance to first learn, and then teach AutoCad which is the computer version of the Technical Drawing I had learnt at school. Eventually, we moved back to England to see more of our growing grandchildren and AutoCad enabled me to get a job as a professional draughtsman starting at the ripe old age of 50! A few years later I worked in an architect’s office for a year or so – the oldest one there and yet the office junior. Along the way, I designed a house in Ireland which got built and designed the converted stables which is now our house and I have been the draughtsman for a Mosque in Bradford for the last eight years (mosque building is an incremental affair as funds are raised).

So despite the non-choices I made when contemplating what to do with my life, I have, amongst many other things, worked in an Engineering Department like my father, painted a body of pictures and dabbled in Architecture after all…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025