          Self-Portrait oil on canvas 24″ x 36″ 1987
In 1987-8 I was interviewed twice by Goldsmiths College….firstly by Mary (Post-partum)Â Kelly and Nick de Ville (Roxy Music covers) for the part-time M.A. In the second interview (in my squat/house on north-circular) I clammed up as they launched a scathing attack on Peter Fuller who had informed most of my recent work then indeed the copy of Beyond the Crisis in Art shown below was a virtual template for my work drawing on post Bomberg figurative expressionism right up to Auerbach/Kossoff. See work at link below…
Horrible Heads paintings Flash Slideshow
To say I was dismayed to be attacked by a graphic designer, levitra and a student whose finest work I discovered later was hanging five bin bags on a wall a la Barry Flanagan was an understatement. Fuller’s erudition was obviously beyond the ‘panel’ and off they jaunted to help launch YBAism. I still think Fuller is some kind of genius and I still think Goldsmiths was not…..
The painting above was stolen by another graphic designer some time later posing as a proto-Saatchi and that was it ..game over……
The picture below is all that remains of ten years painting in ruins in a garage in my home town.
Moral of this story? I have none …but I was right to not get drawn into their vacuous course.
I did not realise that the damage it was doing would last twenty years….in all senses…
Tell me something about how & why you stopped painting, if you would. Perhaps I should say if you did. I think the “How I stopped…” stories from Smithson to Baldessari are informative.
Goldsmiths seems like ancient history now. So I’m iterested to know why it was necessary for you to stop, if you did completely.
Sometimes it seems remarkable to me that some hold this as almost an ethical decision.
After the lambasting you gave Diamond Skull, I’d like to hear it.
L.B.