A good friend of mine is a professional artist. A couple of years ago, when looking at her art, I thought “I fancy having a go at that”. So the next time I visited her I asked if I could give it a try and found myself playing around with all her lovely paints and mediums and beads and stamps and wire and all sorts of other yummy goodies.

I loved it. I loved the freedom of not knowing what I was doing. I loved the surprise of what I came up with. I loved how I didn’t seem to have any way to judge whether or not it was any good and how that kept changing anyway.

About 6 months later, when my friend came to visit me, I asked her if she’d bring some paints so I could have another play. This time I bought some plywood and tried painting on that. I started by applying mediums and then brushed some watered down paint over them. Then my friend went home, taking her materials with her and my paintings were stored in the garage.

Over the next year or so I’d occasionally remember the half finished paintings and think about buying some equipment of my own but I never got round to it.

Occasionally I found myself wishing there was a place I could go to, like my friend’s house, where I could have a play with some arty/crafty materials in the company of other people. When I mentioned this from time to time I was always surprised at how much others seemed to like the idea. My friend Tony, was particularly keen, so with his prompting I set a date, sent out an email and four of us met up in my front room.

That meeting was enough to get me started again.

Fast forward to this year and I’ve cleaned up the attic and continued painting regularly, often accompanied by Tony.