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FILING CABINETS IN MY HEAD

I paint in a particular style and I think and work in a manner that jumps all over the place.

I respond to bright colours, I like paintings that jump around with lots of information in them. Hidden messages wrapped in colour and line.

Half drawn women, with half drawn houses, half drawn roads leading to the next town.

Hidden in these dense patterns are more complete portraits and images.

I have problems with left and right, putting things away then remembering where they are.

When attempting to do a PhD in 1997 at UEL, my tutor Jane Riches suggested that I get tested for dyslexia.

As soon as I sat down, the woman said she could tell I was dyslexic from the way I was sitting.

After the test the woman explained me how I had a short term memory problem and a series of filing cabinets in my head. Somehow the filing system in my head was a bit confused. As she explained I began to draw an image of my head on the back of an enevelope. When my rough sketch was finished I said to her "Is this what you mean?". To her this summed up my dyslexia.The act of drawing itself was my way of understanding a complex problem. she said "I could not draw a problem like that". Maybe it was just a bad drawing!

Over the years I have painted a series of brightly colour images of towns, woman, houses, streets, trains, boats, landscape which I think reflect my dyselxia. Evenually I painted "The filing cabinets in my head" and the relationship between my eyes, hearing, not so great smell and my right hand. I often paint women, but I rather think they represent the creative side of my maleness.

Although I never completed the PhD I was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2006. Life works in strange ways!

And I owe Jane Riches and her fellow colleagues at UEL a great deal because they opened the door for me to realise and grapple with a problem I knew I had for many years.