Art as a Career
While at primary school I realised art was important because humans are a type of ape and as you know Gibbons and chimpanzees are very accomplished artists, so it is appropriate that we should follow in their footsteps, as they’ve been around a lot longer than us.
As a child I drew a lot, mainly battleships, cowboys and Roman torture chambers. My teacher always said if you can draw a battleship steaming through the North Sea you could draw anything. But as we all know a running horse is the most difficult subject to portray accurately. I also did rude pictures, like cows with enormous udders, which I was always very careful to hide from my mother.
I grew up in New Zealand and as I wasn’t much good at sport or fighting being artistic gave me a means of gaining respect from my peers. At high school I did art and borrowed art books from the library and copied pictures from them, which helped me get the hang of painting. After coming to Australia I went to art school, started exhibiting at Watters Gallery and also started playing in bands which led to making posters and record covers. This led to work for Mambo.
I thoroughly recommend art as a challenging and inspirational activity to pursue in your life, but if you were keen on immediate financial security I would think twice about it because it can be a difficult area to make a living in. It can be wise to get a day job as an engineer, quantum physicist or army officer particularly if you intend to be a fine artist rather than a coarse artist.
