Hello and welcome to the first of my blog posts. I’m excited by this opportunity to babble on randomly to new friends and strangers — my current friends are getting a little fed up with it!
A bit about me
The quickest introduction ever: I’m Gary, an Artist and Illustrator living in Cheshire, UK.
You can read all about me on my aptly named About page and then return back to here. There’s some other things you may want to know (but probably don’t):
- When I concentrated as a child I would stick my tongue out – it got very dry.
- I had a recurring dream where aliens would take me and try to make my ears pointy and then Charlie’s Angels would come and save me. I think you can work out what TV I watched in the evening with my sister and dad.
Overall my childhood was great — I grew up in a large village with countryside all around and city life just a bus ride away. No drama. I was quiet, had a small group of close friends, and got on with most people.
Fast Forward
When I was 17 and studying at art college, my Dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer that had spread too much. He spent the next few months pulling random parts of the house apart, such as toilets and taps, to show me how to fix them. He was amazing, showing me basic car maintenance and how put up shelves etc… All these skills have been very useful. He died on his birthday. I went very introverted and everyone got used to that.
Fast Fast Forward
I’m skipping a lot of details here. I went to University, remembered my less introverted side and ended up on a safe career path of Graphic Design. I still did some drawing but mainly forgot about ‘art’ art and then my Mum became ill. Now a quick summary as I don’t want to get too emotional on my first blog post. She had stage four cancer, we moved her into our house (oh yes, I forgot to mention I got married to someone amazing who I love with every nerve ending, organ and skin flake) and we cared for her. The last few weeks were really bad and left me with post-traumatic stress, occasional panic attacks, anxiety, stress, insomnia and bouts of mild depression (lots to work through there).
Then I became a dad.
Art, Being a Parent and No Sleep
Just in case you were wondering — we did manage to tell my mum about the pregnancy. It was one of the last conversations we had and it was wonderful.
The first few months of parenthood was like being a slave to a demanding alien that didn’t speak our language and got mad quickly — Luckily, this alien did not want to make my ears pointy. Things slowly improved over the next year and the alien became human, smiling and giggling occasionally when not crying or sleeping.
With little time available, and still reeling after events with my mum, I looked hard at everything I wanted to do in life and threw most of it out. Art is where it has always been for me and it took a lot of life events to learn that. So now I am back where I belong — getting messy with pencils and paints. I would love you to grab a mug of tea and come be messy along with me.
Thank you so much for taking the time to come here and read this. It means a lot and I would love to hear from you.
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