A REACTION TO BEING JUDGED

 

When I read in the local Stornoway Gazette that my home had reduced two of the three Scotland’s Home of the Year judges to tears it made me wonder what I had done. Had I perhaps revealed a little too much of myself, shown some tragic vulnerability, or displayed a tortured soul from some past event? Or was it simply the intensity of the care and attention I had put into my home, the love and beauty in those objects I have inherited, collected, restored or created myself. Out of the 73 object I counted hanging in the entrance hall, up the stairs and on the landing, I had created 45, while many of the others I had restored to their former glory, or simply framed. Many years ago during my first exhibition in France, a woman who wanted to buy a picture also wanted to tell me what she felt my paintings conveyed. She struggled for a moment trying to find the appropriate words and then said “ils sont triste”, they are sad. She purchased a small oil depicting the entrance to a field with brilliant yellow flowers, but I was struck by the accuracy of her perception. I learnt then that it is impossible for an artist to keep himself out of the picture.

When Anna Campbell-Jones, Michael Angus and Katie Spiers first entered my home I was there to greet them, not in person, but virtually imprinted wherever they looked. If I myself had been there the effect would have been less dramatic.

I am not what you’d call a successful artist, in the sense that my artwork is not snapped up immediately by the cognoscenti, or that galleries are clamouring to get my work onto their walls. My prices were seen recently as too modest for the London market and required tripling if they were to sell, and they did. However today many people simply don’t have any disposable income for anything beyond the strictly essential. Thankfully like most artists money is not the driving force behind my creativity. If I give a moment’s thought as to a piece I’m engaged on having some monetary worth it will more than likely turn out to be rubbish. So it was with my house, I never considered my restoration or interior decoration in the light of adding value, rather I did it because it was a rational need for my own comfort or that it simply gave me pleasure.

Is my work still sad? I hope not. Today it is full of colour and mischief. I remain in my isolation somewhat disconnected from the harshness and reality of the outside world, and in doing so retain much of my childlike naivety. There is nothing within my home that I have not acquired or made because I find it either, beautiful, useful or whimsical, and suppose that could also come under the heading love.

The fact that I am single has enabled me to follow pursue my aims without restraint, nobody to question my choices or suggest alternative. Like my father I will often use people as a sounding board to bounce my ideas off, but I will always end up doing what I want. Steve Adams who assisted me with a lot of the major work was masterful in going along with what I wanted, and would only give suggestion of how to best achieve that, surely the sign of a skilled builder.

I am glad that the judges came looking with their eyes and their hearts wide open to truly see and feel the depth of sentiment within these walls. Anna said she had never seen such an exceptional example of a home meeting the criteria of expressing the owner’s personality and taste, and of course love. “The overwhelming sense of the person who lives there communicated via the cornucopia of his incredible creations, from painted floors, to the embroidery, to the artwork on the walls and all by his own hand, what a genius!”