Thirty years since I was eight. Tomorrow it will be thirty one, but that’s close enough. Close enough to remember. A rather odd milestone and yet in some ways I don’t really feel any different. Still that awkward, odd child trapped inside a body that was rapidly growing alien to me. The ridicule, the shame. Even after all these years the shame that I can never quite shake off. At times it feels akin to grief. That too follows me everywhere, like silent ghosts whose tendrils of smoke work their way around a room before they gently start to choke you up inside.

Last month I took a three day Alla Prima still life oil painting workshop at Raw Umber Studios in my local town of Stroud. It felt like a slightly daunting prospect to paint three paintings in three days when I would usually take over three hundred hours to paint one of my large portraits. The challenge of working from life was also nerve wracking as I always work from photographic references. The idea was to paint one painting a day - which was a period of about six hours with some breaks.*

This time of year is never easy for me, and even more so this year with the impending loss of my therapist on the horizon. Actually, that’s happening tomorrow, but I don’t want to think about that right now especially as it’s an ending in which I have had no say in whatsoever, yet I digress. I have been looking for ways to distract myself and to really channel all of my emotions into my art, and last week the perfect opportunity presented itself to me.

During this pandemic we have all had to get used to wearing masks of one sort or another, whether we like it or not. Here in the UK I personally wish there was more of an ethos for wearing masks in order to protect others, particularly the most vulnerable in our communities so that opening up isn’t something that is exclusive only to those of us who are NOT extremely clinically vulnerable. Instead we have a culture of individualism and ‘personal responsibility’, something that encourages us to only consider ourselves and our own individual circumstances.