I love to paint, but it can’t cut me off from the world entirely

Last Sunday I did a talk at the Anteros Arts Foundation, an art gallery and charity in Norwich. It was a fundraiser for Anteros, as I have had a studio there and love what they do. The story I offered was of someone who got all the art chances while banged up. 

And who got so deeply into art it completely changed their life, as the regime that ran the juvenile punishment system realised that having young people incarcerated also presented the chance of reforming them. 

The oil painting accompanying my talk is large, about five foot by four. Oil paint is greatly on the decline because it’s a slow process. You put oil paint on and it takes days, if not weeks, to dry. I put it on thick so it takes even longer. But part of the joy is the thickness, the heaviness and the look of the paint when applied. It looks real. It looks substantial. And it looks as if it’s there forever. 

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My made-up flower piece that you see below is physically heavy, and for many people who’ve seen it, it looks forceful. And real. Even if every plant and vase is invented. In my Anteros studio, often late at night or early in the morning, I would be conjuring up these imaginary plants. For me it’s a brilliant obsession. But as I paint I am not entirely cut off from the world. Trump’s been big in my mind sometimes while I paint. Or the skilfulness, or otherwise, of our relatively newly elected government. How is Starmer doing, I think as I paint an imaginary glass vase. 

Added to this invasion of the current world through thought are the old newspapers covering the floor to absorb the paint drips and splashes. They seem so much more interesting when they are discarded onto the floor. Younger people lose out when they go to a fish and chip shop because they don’t wrap your dinner in old newspapers as they used to. So you don’t get to discover some news story you’d missed earlier. Likewise because of the vast decline in the reading of papers and magazines, newspapers are no longer used as a cover on floors when cleaning or to prevent dirt. 

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I was doing a drawing only last week when I heard on the radio that the consumption of vegetables had fallen dramatically. Only 17% of adults are actually getting the right amount each day. 

As for children, it’s dropped even more alarmingly. They blame the steady growth of ‘ready meals’. People not being arsed to cook. 

I heard this on a day when carrots, peas, potatoes and mushrooms went into my steam saucepan to accompany a steak pie for an evening meal for my grandson and me. Admittedly I didn’t make the pie, but I got the veg right. 

Listening to the radio story about people finding life too complicated and reverting to the ready-made meal brought me back to the painter David Hockney. Back to the 1960s when he dumped oil paint with its slow and cumbersome usage and adopted acrylic paint, a water-based imitation oil paint that dries almost instantly. 

Decades later museums and collectors who had bought Hockney’s acrylics found themselves having to do a lot of restoration on some of his works in this new material as it doesn’t have the staying power of oil paint. 

In decades to come, those former young people who decry vegetables may well need a good bit of restoration work in the hospital and doctor’s surgery. The short cuts can prove disastrous. Short cuts of today may well be the illnesses of tomorrow. Instantaneous is the word that is slowly undoing our future and current health, our mental health as much as our physical health. I need not lecture about it. The war between oil paint and acrylic, you would call it in my world of painting. So if you go into an art shop today the shelves of oil paint shrink but acrylic grows like billy-o. 

I included in my talk my struggle to get educated and find an interest that would lift me out of poverty and crime. We raised about a thousand pounds for this wonderful art centre, sitting overlooking the banks of the Wensum. Norwich is an incredible place and it’s worth spending time there. Dare I say, without cheesing off the locals, that it reminds me of a place lost in time.

Try the slow, the careful, the all-consuming, so as to counter the mental damage done by the instantaneous.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words from our archive.

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