The Painting • A journey threw my mind

Enter the flat and the first thing you see is a painting.

Once upon a life ago I led a completely different existence to the one I do now, I had studied 3D furniture design at the Kingston-Upon-Thames School of Art and Design and had worked my way up and eventually was successful enough to be able to finance a workshop with a friend designing and making built-in furniture for the rich and famous – London is full of them.

They were exciting times, among others we worked for: the Rolling Stone’s management, including Bill Wyman himself, Paul McCartney’s management, Anna Ghomi interiors, Tina Turner even personally cooked us a full English breakfast one Sunday morning, she didn’t have to, she had servants to do that sort of thing for her, she stood there frying eggs and bacon chatting with us, it was surreal, and it left a huge impression on me, the character of the woman, because since moving to Germany, many people I’ve met here who in a similar situation feel it beneath them to even offer a cheap cup of coffee, in fact I even had the experience here in Berlin that a client ,who was feeling peckish, decided to eat my lunch for me, and was incensed when I complained about it, because obviously I then had nothing to eat all day – fat fucker.

Anyway, I digress . . . I had shared a house in Kingston with someone on the fine art course, Jack Hicks and we had somehow kept in touch, and one evening he invited us all to an exhibition of his work at a local wine bar or somewhere similar.

I liked his work, I still do, and as it was all for sale and I was flush with money at the time, I bought this painting.

No. 11 “LOVERS” (Pastel Painting) £140

It’s been on one of my walls ever since.

It reminds me of everything I loved about living in London, of friends, of the work I so enjoyed, and yet the subject matter itself has curiously evaded me, I am now close to no-one.

During the whole of this Covid pandemic no one has contacted me, not even family, not a single call all year.

The Lovers. hanging there, it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever been in, and like losing a limb, I would be devastated if anything ever happened to it.

Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue – c. 1987:

PAINTINGS AND ETCHINGS

JACK HICKS

These are some of the paintings and prints I have produced over the past three years. The style of most of them is derived from cubist painting, which I still find one of the most interesting of modern “isms”.

Some of the prints are based on Bronze Age art, which has some surprisingly modern ways of representing the world.

Most of the landscapes are of Salisbury Plain, near which I was born and grew up, and the figures are explained below where necessary.

No. 11 “LOVERS” (Pastel Painting) £140