Trees, Cars, Penguins & Motorphobia

 Treelanders

Citroen Tree

One reason these car drawings came about must be down to the underlying  perversity of human nature. If this isn't true then why is it that one sure way of digging yourself out of a creative rut is to direct your energies towards the opposite of what attracts you (in this case cars). 

Until recently, if I drew a street scene I'd automatically edit out the autos (unless they were pre 1930's vintage), in fact the idea of painting any modern car would really jar. I had a bad case of artistic motorphobia. 

So following a well known treatment for phobias I tried a variation on the gradual exposure technique and tried combining my car/fear with my plant/love into one drawing. It seemed to work. I felt strangely inspired and very soon was enjoying the subtle curves of a sleek ferrari more than the twists and turns of a pumpkin vine. But  while reflecting on this revelation I remembered the penguins.  
       

The Penguins

During a particularly apathetic phase as a young art student I found myself sitting in that most hated of places the ceramics studio and being angrily told by my tutor to stop moping about and get on with something. So to keep him quiet I picked up a boring lump of clay and pretended to be interested.  An hour later I'd made my first ceramic penguin and within a week or so was transformed from the runt of the class to the new ceramics golden boy.

Having made my penguin prototype, along with a simple three piece mould I was able to slip caste it and produce a whole army of penguins which I then painted as individual anthropomorphised characters. 

some of the survivors: Mrs Goggins, Perry & Waggy (looking slightly battered)

People loved them, the tutors went mad, they all wanted one. This left me in shock, surely I was destined to be a famous painter, an artist of great standing, honoured many times over at the royal academy summer exhibitions. Things now looked very different though, the future was no longer populated by adoring art critics but by penguins wearing silly costumes, all because I'd let myself be persuaded to go against a gut instinct, that ceramics was not for me.

I still have some of those original model penguins (even though they have a tendency to topple over onto their beaks) and I'm sure they can still be found tucked away in some dusty corner of an ex-tutors bookshelf but in the end they didn't bring me any fame or fortune, perhaps because I stubbornly reverted back to some of those gut feelings.