Arty-farty

Today

V excited because a local restaurant has given me two walls on which to display my framed photos for sale. I really only started taking photos five years ago when Paul gave me a very nice small digital camera. I got into the habit of carrying it with me everywhere and discovered that I have quite an eye for a shot. I began to notice that I had bulging folders on my computer of photos (presently standing at about 11,000) and wondered what use to make of them.

When an acquaintance of ours produced a show of her photos mounted in cheap frames and charged a whole lot of money, I thought I could do better, so I did.

I use Photoshop to manipulate the images and do my own mounting and framing, so that the whole is properly presented.

The proprietor of the restaurant asked me to write a little bit about myself. Thinking that a blurb that ran "Well, Julia quite likes to take a few pictures with her very simple camera" lacked the right artistic gravitas, I've delved into my past and come up with a reference to my art school days.

In My Day

I may have said before that I was considered to be the "arty" one of the family. Well, someone had to fill the vacancy and I was the only one who couldn't keep away from paper and pencil.

Looking back, I do think that I drew quite well, but I also think that I lacked a real sense of design. It was Mamma or Chris who designed our cake layouts and Daddy who put together the Christmas cards. When I applied to St Martins Art College, David designed and made a very natty card viewer for some of my slides of my theatre designs. The college was much more fascinated by this than by my costumes.... And I never learnt to manipulate paint.

At college I learnt to sew and design clothes - a skill I still have, though only occasionally employed these days. But overall, I think my artistic ability has been much inflated within my family. The outside world, being more astute, paid me little attention. An eminent stage designer once came to assess and review our work while I was at Worthing college. He looked at my stage designs for "Rhinoceros", patted me on the head and told me to be sure to tell my children that Mummy had once been to art college. I'm still reeling from that multi-layered insult.

Although I trained to be an art and needlework teacher, I'm glad I didn't follow through as I've no idea how I would have sustained any creative flow long enough to be an inspiration to children.

I must say that, after a lifetime of working using just my brain, I really enjoy the physical act of creating the framework for my pictures. And at least I haven't sunk into the old-lady retirement habit of taking up water-colour painting.