One day in about 1966 two artists visited the art supply shop below the Overgang at the harbourside in Brixham.
The younger artist knew the king of art mediums is oil. With linseed oil, turps, scratchy brushes and canvas, this was the alchemy needed to create a “work of art”.
Having announced she was going to be an artist and go to art school (Tony Hancock hovers in the wings) the older and wiser artist replied “Art schools are the universities of life” along with “never trust banks” and “people with glass tables shouldn’t sit on them” and “hang on, you’re nine years old”
To the younger artist, buying the oil paint would mark a line between what you create with poster paints on paper and a new expectation; ‘the work of art’.
Disaster: the completed canvas was the work of a nine year old; she wanted it to be at least a Picasso.
Now she realises this was the closest she got.
‘It takes a long time to be young’ Pablo Picasso
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