England Pre-Memory – Punch In The Gut

Art, England, Personal Bits

Like George Lucas I’m going to jump back to a time before my move to England with a couple stories that inspired me to travel across the pond. Enjoy!

I’m 18 years old and I’m sitting in line with other hopefuls at OCAD (then The Ontario College of Art). I’ve not decided entirely what I want to do with my life and my father is getting nervous that he’s going to have a live-in son until he shuffles off this mortal coil. I do know I want to stay in the art field but I had not decided exactly where I was going to take my talents. My portfolio, chock full of wildly coloured pastels of muscular torsos I had been drawing for months, sits on my bouncing knee. Compared to the rest of the hopefuls, my manner of dress is utterly “Sears” to their “Queen Street West”: one small girl is decked out entirely in leather in her shock Rough Trade look, her hair teased higher than my hopes. This is 1983, remember. I’m there to sign up for their Fine Arts program and let that take me wherever I wanted to go.

I enter the room and here is where my memory shatters up to a point: The room is narrow, almost another hallway. It’s dark, or I sort of recall that it was dark. There are three people at a desk and two look through my portfolio. I was so nervous that I didn’t catch who everyone behind that desk was. Only now, in my 40s, someone told me that one of the people looking at my work was a student and I assume the one not looking at my portfolio was a teacher or admissions officer. I do remember they asked all the questions.

What were my interests, favorite art period, method, incentives, history, my personal history, more personal history? Suddenly it was over. Fast. They breezed through my work and shut the portfolio. Not a good sign.

Then one of them laid it on the line (and I’m paraphrasing here): I was a privileged middle class white kid who had not experienced anything in life, certainly not enough to create any kind of meaningful art and that I should get out of Ontario and see real art. It was like a punch in the gut. The fact that I was living in my Dad’s basement and working nights at a hotel and had never travelled further than , made the OCAD’s assessment of me sting a little more.

They were right. If I wanted to be a serious artist I had to go see the real thing. Including all life’s little roadbumps that came up getting to those galleries. Of course, for weeks I was utterly crushed and moped around like my life was over.

Then my sister called. She asked how I was and offered words of encouragement and then suggested that I move to England under the Student Work Abroad Program. I can remember vividly how a light came on over my head. This is exactly what I needed to do.

5 thoughts on “England Pre-Memory – Punch In The Gut

  1. Dead Robot

    Evil Panda :

    Yeah, admissions to any MFA program that doesn’t advertise on the backs of matchbooks (DRAW THE PIRATE!) is near to impossible. I went to H.S. with truly talented people (at least I thought so at the time), and I thought I was one of them. We dutifully went to the Art Institute of Chicago to show our portfolios and try to get into the program, and all of us but one was rejected…we were also white middle class kids with no experience into what makes good art.

    The one of us that did get in, Tony, was brilliant, and usually stoned or tripping, which informed a lot of his work. So, he was accepted in, lasted a year, dropped out, and went on to be one of the lead artists for Bally/Midway, designing things like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jams. I went on to a fairly useless degree in Art History, after doing my own pre-college European tour.

    I just started painting again after a 20+ year hiatus. It’s amazing what you still remember, and what you completely forget

    Maybe if I shot heroin or drank like a motherf**ker I’d be a better artist. Never mind EP, I think you’re successful… in life.

    Will you be showing some of this art you are churning out? Which suburb strip mall corner will you be showing at?

  2. Evil Panda

    Yeah, admissions to any MFA program that doesn’t advertise on the backs of matchbooks (DRAW THE PIRATE!) is near to impossible. I went to H.S. with truly talented people (at least I thought so at the time), and I thought I was one of them. We dutifully went to the Art Institute of Chicago to show our portfolios and try to get into the program, and all of us but one was rejected…we were also white middle class kids with no experience into what makes good art.

    The one of us that did get in, Tony, was brilliant, and usually stoned or tripping, which informed a lot of his work. So, he was accepted in, lasted a year, dropped out, and went on to be one of the lead artists for Bally/Midway, designing things like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jams. I went on to a fairly useless degree in Art History, after doing my own pre-college European tour.

    I just started painting again after a 20+ year hiatus. It’s amazing what you still remember, and what you completely forget

  3. Dead Robot

    Sean :

    Hmmm…I was expecting a little more awkwardly shoe-horned Rontos and possibly Greedo shooting first…

    ;)

    I could revise my past if it pleases you:

    “I got into OCAD and made one million dollars in my first showing of lettuce leaves stapled to my genitals”

    The end.

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