My previous visit in 2010 left me in no doubt what the trends would be in the following year. In every hall, in every category of retail, a celebration of ‘Britishness’ epitomised in the prosaic emblems of Union Jacks, cupcakes, teapots and regality spewed out from every stand. Umbrellas to slippers, fine art to camping equipment, I was lost in a sea of bizarre post-Imperial flag waving, a curious rose-tinted cupcake of nostalgia sprinkled with hundreds and thousands and served on a cabbage rose plate.

As an illustrator and image maker, one with a unashamed obsession with the murky ‘anti-art’ heresy of commercialism, this discovery was manna from heaven. It just makes life EASY for guys like me. The London Olympics were probably the greatest drive for this new trend, and it seemed to free up retailers to indulge unashamedly (at last) in an unselfconscious celebration of Britishness with the taint of jingoism or worse, nationalistic zealotry that’s so often been associated with the use of the Union Jack.

So 2012 and I’m back at the NEC, curious to see how trends have shaped and shifted, morphed and moulded into new and exciting looks. Sometimes it’s not as obvious as the patriotic tidal wave of 2010, but often as not, you can see the new themes breaking up through the ground like spring bulbs. Screening out the retailers who are happier to stick with what they feel safe with, you can spot the companies, individuals, designers and forward thinkers keen to push on and celebrate the new. After all, this is a trade fair, it’s about bottom line. These business savvy folk will not be found wanting in knowing the way we will spend our money. They know before we do, and we are all happy to be led by the nose.

Imagine my thudding disappointment then, when, as I took no more than two steps inside the volume halls, I was greeted by a barrage of Cool Britannia bunting, a seemingly obsessive need to stick a Union Jack on every type of retail output, for every breath I took an over-iced cup cake, a tricolour rainbow of red, white and blue, a cup of tea TOO FAR. I felt flat. Coupled with the pseudo nostalgia of ‘vintage’ style that flowed from the ever popular ‘shabby chic’, I struggled to see the spring bulbs that I was hoping to see.
Now don’t misunderstand me, I have no issue with the emblematic themes of patriotism, in fact, quite the opposite, it makes life easy like I said, BUT, it’s time to move and away from this look now. Before we know it the London Olympics will come and go in the flick of our Mayor’s snow white hair, the Queen’s diamond Jubilee will sparkle momentarily before the we all grow tired of the royal correspondent’s reverential commentary. It will be gone. Our Little Englander homesteads will be left with a cracked flag teapot and memories of what we ‘should’ have won.

When I returned home on the train, I looked at my notes. Thoughts I jotted down, referencing conversations with clients, friends, my agent, retailers. Then I thought about where we are, financially. There’s something about times of austerity that has a real and tangible effect on us all, and my believe, on the way we see everything around us, and that means the things we choose to buy. I started to think about the comfort of patriotism and all protective it’s symbolism, like in post-war Britain, and maybe the soft, amenable safety of nostalgia is a haven for us all when we seem to be shrouded by this dark fog of recession.

Maybe, just maybe it works this way. Perhaps buying a teapot like granny’s, adorning our wall spaces with vintage snapshots of a distorted British yesteryear, indulging a little of our time making the perfect English cupcake is the ultimate comfort blanket, and one we are not ready throw off. Even the colour palettes and pattern trends seem to fly in the face of our current predicament. Candy shop hues, carnival typefaces, polka and primes.

It’s not entirely without president. The pop art movement of the late 50′s and 60′s was clearly a reactionary movement propelled by the images rampant commercialism, but it could be argued that in some senses it was a reaction in part to post – war austerity. It wasn’t lost on me the irony of seeing walls of de-constructed Union Jacks when Jasper Johns was doing this 50 years ago with the Stars and Stripes. My agent and I discussed the forthcoming Surtex show in New York in May, and how the strong image buying US market is bemused by our flag flying output. To say it doesn’t translate is an understatement.

So, we are where we are, as they say. I guess there’s nothing remotely surprising about us all cowering under the blanket while we shelter from the cold fiscal winds of the outside world. It makes perfect sense. It takes energy and bravery and a positivity to push through new themes and trends, and maybe this isn’t the time, not yet. There will be a wind of change and I don’t think it’s too far off, like just about everything else art and design moves cyclically. I feel as though we are reaching saturation point with current trends and maybe it’s just a reticent retail market that’s slowing the change for fear of financial ruin. Let’s see. With any luck the cogs of industry with grind and crank and turn a little more smoothly this year, and in turn we all start to turn our heads forward and look for the new.

In the meantime, however, I’ll indulge and gladly stay aboard the British bandwagon until the wheels fall off. This is really what the job of an illustrator is all about, in my field anyway. I’ll journey along taking the occasional pit-stop to indulge moments of being an artist, then hop back on with ticket in hand and carry on. But one thing I’ve learnt is to sit at the front of the bus, that way, at journey’s end, you are first in line for the queue aboard the next bandwagon, even if you have to wait a little longer that you anticipated for it’s arrival.

What does any of this have to do with art, you say? (well you probably didn’t, but I need that segue way so let’s run with it). We all know that moment when some new acquaintance asks, ‘and what do you do?’. Personally speaking I find that moment difficult. If I say ‘artist’ I feel awkwardly pretentious, if I say ‘illustrator’ it’s normally followed by ‘oh, what’s that then?’ There have been many occasions in the past when, quite honestly, I have answered ‘hairdresser’. It’s not a leap for people, apparently, on account of the long locks. The crux is, what I do is illustration, what I AM is an artist. Not in the literal or vocational sense necessarily, just who I am inside, and it’s through this some time distorted, but always colourful prism that I view the world around me.

So to art, and artists, and the legacies of joy, inspiration and influence they have left. Left for all of us. From the most deeply held pain and intensity expressed on canvas to the superficial beauty of meaningless doodle, art is everywhere, it’s integral to our visual daily experience. In architecture, design, graffiti, the wallpaper you chose from B&Q, the messages written to a lover in the sand. To me, all equally valid, for me there is no distinction. Most art aficionados, the puritanical slaves to the reverential bullshit of ‘professional’ art analysis would baulk at that comment. I’m sure an indisputable argument to the contrary could slay me in an instant, but I am unshakable in the belief that any act of physical creativity from the hand of one, for the benefit of another, regardless of context or skill is art. It begins, and ends, right there. No categories, no boxes, no tags, just art, and it’s ability to be whatever you want it to be.

Because of this liberal and in the words of a tutor ‘idiotic’ view on the creative world, I have refused to take a reverential view of art, I just like what I like. I don’t like being coerced into ‘appreciating’ high art, contemporary installations or anything else for that matter, it smacks of elitism and disenfranchises those who are considered unable to appreciate it’s value or message. I HATE that, it’s wrong. Imagine if the same arrogant philosophy was applied to music? Art, like music, has many strands, each and every one as valid as the next, no hierarchy, no pecking order of notability.

So what I would like to do from this point on is to share some cherished images and favoured artists that have, over the past 20 years or so, seeped into my subconscious and left an indelible mark. Those works of art that have somehow transcended mere visual absorption and artists whose work has connected with me at deeper level. Some will be familiar, highly regarded and works of note, others not. (None will be mine, in case you were wondering!) I have never shared my views on art, artists and their works before, this is a departure for me, but I will endeavour to communicate my perceptions and musings without the cloak of pretentious commentary that so often contaminates art discussion.

Amongst the many artists and creative works I have enjoyed and studied, few have registered with me more than Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Peter Blake and Mark Rothko. It’s a real pot pourri, I grant you, each so different from the the other, each with their own extraordinary story to tell. But it’s the artist, not the art, that I see in each instinctive brush stroke, each laboured and repainted ground, each second long scamp. Though by no means the only artists that have affected me this way, this quartet have gone beyond ‘les yeux’, and their work is something I could discuss for a lifetime. Fortunately for you, I won’t, but indulge me if you can, when I post next, starting with my king of kings, Marc Chagall.

In that first week I was lost. Hastily and clumsily acquired friendships sewn loosely together over a shared cigarette or the lend of a putty rubber helped sooth the weeping wounds that cut deep into my already gossamer thin skin. I was surrounded by individuals that actually KNEW about painters, the seminal art movements of the past, contemporary works of great importance, all that should have been part of my cerebral art bank. My account was empty. In fact, I was heavily was overdrawn, if you can excuse the pun. I was 16, I was completely out of my depth and I was scared.

The bonds of new friendships were still tacky, the glue hadn’t set strong yet, so the hour long lunch time hiatus would often see me hiding in the library, alone. Any money I had had already been spent on cigarettes, graphite sticks and cartridge paper, so avoiding the refectory was actually a blessing for my empty stomach. The library, though not exactly labyrinthine was still choc full of weighty tomes on every type of art, design, photographic and literal subject. To say it was a sanctuary is an understatement of some proportion to be honest. And it was here, on the most crispest of autumn days, as I sat under the far window with my feet tucked under the chair and a KitKat on my lap, that I discovered Marc Chagall.

I’m still not sure why I selected his book from the shelf. I think there was something about the spine of the book that caught my eye. I can’t remember really. But I can remember how I felt when I poured over the plates in the book. I didn’t have a critiques vocabulary, I didn’t have any refined palette that I could draw upon for opinion. My eyes were completely fused to the imagery, and without any prompt from an educated elder or condescending tutor, I had found a love of art for myself, and the impact on me, at that moment, drew tears.

Sitting on the top deck of the bus that evening, I lit up another menthol cigarette and drew Chagallesque icons onto the dirty, steamy film that clung to the window. Against the inky blackness of the night outside I made my first ever significant artistic marks. I watched as the gathering droplets of accumulated breath on the window ran down my masterpieces and split them asunder. I smiled, how arrogant of me to publicly exhibit these pathetically clumsy interpretations this way, I mused, and laughed quietly and knowingly inside as I imagined Chagall’s tears of rage running down the window to destroy the offending graffiti.

So why Chagall? Why did his work penetrate that bullish, stubborn inarticulate teenager’s skin so deeply? Particularly when she was at a time of her life so shrouded in naivety, shyness and confusion? I don’t know. Love at first sight? Is THAT how it feels? I guess so. It was the connection. An instantaneous neural pathway that just sprung into life that day in the library. I devoured more and more painter’s books hoping for the same reaction, thinking it was just a passing fancy, but in truth no other artist has ever come close in terms of an emotional reaction. First love. All these years later it feels the same. So, if I still have your attention, I will try and explain why I feel this way, and why no other painter transports me to a state of reverie that I treasure more than I can convey.

Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.

The first piece of Chagall’s work that I clearly remember transcending the shallow experience of just ‘liking’ something was Love and Flowers.

Perhaps initially it was the strength of the palette, the bold use of each of the three primary colours. That alone would catch anyone’s eye. But for me, and as is the case with all his work, it’s the narrative that beguiles. The unashamed post-impressionist modernist depiction of romance is unmatched, unselfconscious, almost feminine. This piece screams passion, love, sex even, more vociferously than any sonnet. The figurative elements of Chagall’s works are, personally viewed, the most poignant exploration of love I’ve seen. So many male artists have been concerned voyeristically with the anatomical fancies of the female form, but in Chagall’s work so much more is revealed, by the contradiction of revealing less.

In this painting notice the almost forceful embrace of the couple, her back arching into his body, the translucency of her form through which we can see his, (perhaps a sexual metaphor), the hint that the lovers are dancing by moonlight, the symbolism of the fruitful contents of the basket, the almost explosive blooming jug of flowers. Personally speaking I find this painting incredibly moving. It’s an whole opera of emotion played out on canvas, a theatrical and joyous depiction of a human bond. There is also something in his rendering of what he tries to describe, the looseness of the brush marks, the courage to be almost childlike in its expression. Doesn’t that say so much more about an artist than those painters who triumph the cold execution of perfect technique that leaves us with no questions?

The second painting that became imprinted in my mind’s eye during that time was the most beautiful La Mariée, depicting a young bride. This piece probably contains every recurring symbolic image Chagall loved to paint. How deeply he must have felt about those themes to depict them over and over again? Setting aside the extraordinary palette, that almost marine like deep blue ground seeping to the very edge of the canvas, again it’s the narrative that sings. I cannot decide on the role of the male character. Something so peasant like about his attire may suggest he isn’t the groom, but either way, he is showing great reverence and respect for the bride. Is he adjusting her veil, or is that an embrace of protection, of love? It can be either, or both, maybe. I’m sure if Chagall wants us to believe this is the partner, he wouldn’t have have this figure almost part of the background.

Then again, is this a painter so delighted to express his deference and respect for women that he is insisting you must only notice her? The red wedding attire is perhaps symbolic of youth, happiness, fertility, the heat and light of a new life marked by a union. That’s how I see it. The sounds, sights and senses of Chagall’s early life in Vitebsk are apparent here as in many of his works, a constant homage to the impoverished Jewish upbringing that moulded the painter he became. The abundance of joy and affection for his roots that percolates from the canvases he created was unmatched in modernism in my opinion. What is art if not a chance to reveal your heartfelt beatitude, should you feel it, for your early life? That recurring reference to his past, painted again and again with so much passion, even blessedness, returns me to his work time after time.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

Another aspect of Chagall’s work that seals him as my king of kings is his fabulously expansive use of media. He tackled many materials, trying to find yet another vehicle for his creativity, and seemingly triumphing each and every time. From the venture into stained glass windows, to the tapestries, lithographs, etchings, murals, theatre sets and ceramic work, his legacy is a body of work that stretched far and beyond the confines of gouache on canvas. No matter which media he embraced, that same sense of folkish excitement, that same understanding of colour and shape, that almost impossible ability to know not what to paint, but what to leave out, just leaps out like one of his many dancing fiddle players.

His triumphant painting of the ceiling of the Paris Opera in 1963 is maybe the ultimate legacy. The fact that a modernist artist, a humble Russian Jew, was asked to create a work on the almost sacrilegious walls of a French institution speaks volumes for the esteem he was held in by this time. If we are going to talk bucket lists, this HAS to be on mine. If you want to swim with dolphins or climb Kilimanjaro, be my guest. If you want to drive Route 66, visit the Pyramids or watch migrations across the Serengeti, please go. But on your way, drop by and leave me tickets for the Paris Opera?!

There is so much more I could add, literally hundreds of images I could add to make this post painfully long. The temptation to indulge this way is very strong, but in the end I would be doing little more than ambushing you with my own obsession. I’ll save you that, but I really hope that this blog has gone some way to conveying how art, in particular Chagall’s, has impacted on my life. Maybe in the sense that I have an irrepressible desire to create colourful and joyous images like he did, yet in my own clumsy, unrefined way.

Maybe more so that his art showed me how to feel truly deeply about another’s creations, a feeling I was in no way expecting ever to feel, and was at the time to young to understand.But maybe most importantly of all, in the way that that single moment of revelation in the library allowed me to believe I could be an artist, that I did understand what it meant to paint or illustrate or create and perhaps just have fun, and that the feeling of disenfranchisement I felt before I slid that book from the shelf could evaporate in an instant , and it did.

Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.

“My Life” by Marc Chagall is a revelation and a joy. If you are so inclined, I implore you to read it!

I guess the fundamental question that arises is why? What is the explanation for such an omission from my daily wittering, whether with friends and family, through social networking like Twitter or even with my agent. Not until I decided to pen a blog have I even asked that question of myself, and it has taken a week for me to get to the real crux of the blank space on the page.

Humour me a while whilst a take a small bus ride (actually quite a long one!) back to my childhood, a childhood that was as delightfully bourgeois as it was unconventional, a childhood of extraordinary ordinariness. In that time of orthodoxy yet curiously idiosyncratic parenting I found myself a small whirling dervish of creativity smack bang in the middle of an existence completely void of any artistic aptitude. Let it be known I am not saying that in an any sense disparagingly, far from it, my parents were, and still are the most extraordinary people, but, and I say this with more affection than I can convey, utterly hopeless with a pencil. In fact, no one in my family can draw. AT ALL. So there I was, carrying my huge arsenal of pencils and felt tips around like a crack commando fully ammo’d up, never more that two feet away from a sketch book or colouring book, mystifying my parents with a seamlessly unquenchable need to draw, paint or create.

As was so “de rigeur” in the upbringing of children at that time, I was left to get on with my obsession without much intervention. I can distinctly remember Mum waxing lyrical to a friend over the phone, not about any flourishing talent I was developing, not that I was going to become an iconic modern phenomenon of the nouveau art scene (!), no. She waxed and waxed some more and then waxed the waxed area a final time on the pivotal topic of ‘at least she’s not drawing on the walls’. That was it. Any discussion on the subject barely got past that first pragmatic base, so I was left, quite happily, to scribble and stick and paste and sew and mould and paint and create. Lost in my little world of crayons and cartridge paper whilst the conventions of my family life swirled unnoticed around me.

It didn’t change much throughout the forthcoming years, whether at home or especially through the creative void that was the British education system. Art was neither discussed or valued, just a mere frippery of occasional activity that ‘arty types’ like to indulge whilst the rest played sport, clandestinely smoked contraband behind the sports hall or tried to get a decent snog at the Boy’s Club Disco. Except that was me too. Those of you who have found your way here through Twitter and have some knowledge of my ‘ways’, will not be in least bit surprised by that. I was as conventional as the next girl in some respects, yet art was my love. The one thing I felt a complete kinship with was a closed topic. It just was. No one cared, no one, whether the horrendous Grammar school teachers I fought verbal and emotional battles with, the friends that soaked up so much of my time with their tales of romantic woe and acne remedies, no one ever asked about art. Not once.

Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t mind. I grew up seeing art as a solitary and indulgent experience and actually the idea of expressing or sharing with others was rather discordant to me. It was mine, my thing. It gave me something to anchor myself to whilst negotiating the turbulent waters of my Grammar School education, an experience as destructive as it was didactic. I was, of course, condemned to life of impoverishment and paucity by my monstrously archaic Head Mistress. The very concept that one of their pupils could abandon the more noble art of studying the great English poets and dear William S at university and pursue a career in art, was, in her words, ridiculous. That single word, and the way that stubborn sixteen year old girl met her gaze with fury and indignation, served as all the fuel I ever needed to power my little art rocket ship as I aimed straight for the moon.

And so, within six months of that conversation, I was happily ensconced in Art School and there I remained for a total of five years. Five years of learning to undue everything I had taught myself before, five years of learning to share the experience of art and the styles and artists I was becoming increasingly drawn to, and five years of coming home and STILL not talking about it. Art, still, as now, was an island. I knew it would be my career, I was sanguine and assured in my own stubbornness, rather than in my own ability. That obdurate streak that ran right through me would see to that. I was surrounded by art school friends that possessed skills far eclipsing my own, who’s talents and rendering skills exceeded my attempts by a country mile. But I had the edge. I had learned to fly my little rocket alone, I had the fuel in perpetuity and I was never going to give up. The lack of pretension and any artistic milieu in my proletariat home life (unlike my almost entirely middle class contemporaries) was the greatest advantage of all. I may not have had the indulgences of a creatively informed parent and a grounding in the great masters like so many I shared my art school days with, but I had pragmatism, a level of practical application that cut through the pretentious crap that art school loved to dump on it’s students from a great height. I took what I needed, the skills pertaining to actually being able to draw a life model without making it look as though they should be applying for a disability badge, a life long love of Stanley Spencer, Peter Blake, Mark Rothko, Giacometti, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse and especially Marc Chagall, and of course, kindred spirits.

And that kind of completes the circle in a way. I’m still on my island I guess, surrounded by friends and loved ones, work associates, my Twitter community that have become integral to my daily life all of whom I STILL continue to resist any artistic intercourse. Until now. Maybe I have found an outlet for it here. It may be just a space for me to share some of influences, thoughts and experiences of being a professional (I still baulk at that term) illustrator. Maybe no one will read it, and as you will gather, it is of no consequence, as that would merely hold a mirror to my early experiences. But, and it’s a big but, it would be a novel, and I hope rewarding process. This is about looking behind the eyes, for there is where I reside. My imagination, my barely adequate creativity, my thickly painted soul. On the surface I fear I may present myself as nothing more than a gin swigging, gun totin’ jackass. Hopefully that doesn’t sound narcissistic, I dread being seen that way. But behind the booze and the mascara I am an artist before anything else. Not a good one, just a journeyman scribbler that seldom let’s the subject of her occupation rise to the surface. If I may be so bold, and if you are prepared to indulge me from time to time, this may be the forum for me to share my passion.