Growing up in the 60’s in Vancouver
I grew up in a vibrant city surrounded by colourful images, colourful people and a changing world. The art was varied and bright, from psychedelia to art nouveau with many other influences such as the totem poles of the indigenous people, all thrown in together. How could I not want to be an artist.
We didn’t own our house as renting was so easy and cheap, and meant that we could move with ease. Every house we moved to seemed to have a mural on the wall somewhere. Some of them were really little more than graffiti but on one occasion I remember a basement that had the most beautiful painting on the wall of mountains, grasslands and in the forefront an mage of an Indian standing proud.
The thing was, you could only see this image in all it’s beauty from the top of the stairs as the closer you got, the vaguer the details became. Standing up close, at the bottom of the stairs the marks on the wall seemed chaotic but bright with little sense of any reality to it.
That painting was my first and most important and influential piece of inspiration that I have never forgotten. We all have something that filled us with wonder and sent us in a particular direction, this was mine. Can you remember yours?