“I feel like this page should be scrolling rapidly towards you as you read it with a John Williams led orchestra playing in the background….”
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A long time ago in a place not too far away, Star Wars is the first VHS I can remember watching, beyond repetition. My 50p a week pocket money saved then spent entirely on the toys that I can still smell now, but alas were buried in the garden (why did we do that!?). My 10th birthday was a trip to see Empire Strikes Back in the cinema... I was instantly hooked. Skip forwards a few decades and I've recently run around the Millennium Falcon on set at Pinewood studios, and have a movie-accurate Sandtrooper in my TV room... young habits are our foundations as an adult! As human beings we love nostalgia, love to reminisce and to collect. As well as clearly being no different myself, I'm also in the enviable position of being able to totally absorb and indulge in everything that I love in the world, and get to call it work! To date I've created two '80's Kid' gallery shows celebrating the incredible decade of entertainment that I grew up through. Perhaps every generation thinks the same of their childhood, but personally I see the 80's as the sweet spot in many things... cinematic special effects were still 'real' not CGI; music was focused on artistry; natural talent and flair making the difference in sport before over analysis and perfection sanitised somewhat. Toys and games were solid and with actual catalogues to leaf through before the internet even existed. Cars had style and character... even if by today's standard they didn't work too well. And actors were more iconic too I think!? I have painted some of the greatest who have ever lived, and shall continue to do so. My favourite? To be honest that's easy... Heath Ledger as Joker, one of the most memorable performances in cinematic history. Alongside Arnie as Terminator perhaps... who I actually met my wife through, but that's a story you'll have to read in the book one day. And that's the crazy side of my own passions driving the subject matter for my artwork – through my work I'm connecting entirely with like-minded fans of the same, because of common interests, collectors become great friends, even wives, and when I then get absorbed into those worlds just from the fairly innocuous job of painting pictures for a living, it gets pretty mind blowing.
