The Scottish painter opens up about the 10 things that changed his life 

Cumbernauld

I WAS an overspill kid and it would be daft not to factor in the impact it had on my life. While the rest of my relatives remained in Glasgow, my parents decided to move from Springburn to Cumbernauld. It was a big deal for them to uproot themselves and we went on a slightly different path from the rest of the family by moving there.

Cumbernauld gets a bad name but it was an amazing place to grow up (right). There were no cars, there was lots of open space and we had brilliant schools.

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My wife Ellen

WE have been married since 1984 and if there is one single person who has had the most profound influence on me and my life, then it is unquestionably Ellen. To say she is part of the story is an understatement as we are the same story really. We have known each other since school and I’m 58 now so that’s about 45 years!

We started going out together when I was at art school and we got married when I was 24 and had our first child by the time I was 27.

I am, to my core, a family man and my children and grandchildren are also profound influences on my life. We had three boys who are now men, Matthew (31), Ryan (28) and Patrick (26) and we have three grandchildren, Sophie (12), Emily (7) and Caelan who is a year old.

The two girls were like an utter torpedo in our lives as they are so different from the boys. You get all these stereotypes but the boys built stuff just to break it up again and used toy swords and guns to fight each other, while the girls create things.

Art school

I WAS a relatively academic boy and could just about put my hand to anything. I got really good grades and was under pressure to do something “sensible” with them. I went to Strathclyde to study civil engineering which was a f***ing disaster. I was just the worst!

At that time you could get a repeat year grant – can you imagine that now? You were able to make a mistake, which lots of people do when they are 17, and I was able to apply for art school.

Art was always really my first love so I got a portfolio together and was accepted in 1979. I did not come from a family of artists and had no real role models so going seemed an impossible thing. Even being allowed to apply was completely out there, so to walk through those doors and be part of that was incredible.

However art school itself was a mixed bag for me. People wax lyrical about how good art school was, but I found it quite a negative experience in terms of furthering my career as an artist. I loved the vibe and the energy but I assumed people would teach you stuff and they didn’t. You were simply given a place and expected to find your path and blossom in your own right. Most of us were too young and just floundered.

I expected rigour but by that time art school had almost accepted a Bauhaus philosophy and the tutors were artists in their own right rather than teachers, so unless you connected with them and their artwork it was very difficult to get anything from them. I found it quite demoralising. You did not get the chance to make any mistakes as you were constantly on show.

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Valerie and the Week of Wonders

IT’S almost impossible to imagine but art school almost knocked art right out of me. When I left, I stepped away from it and started a band (below) with Brian McFie, another art school student, called Valerie and the Week of Wonders! I sang vocals and played bass guitar, Brian played lead and his brother, Ewan, was the drummer and Greg Kane of Hue and Cry played sax with us for a while.

It was the early 1980s and a really exciting time to be a musician in Glasgow as there were all these great bands around, like Orange Juice, Del Amitri and Simple Minds.

Our band signed a record deal with A&M Records and they made all sorts of promises about support and money but there was a change of personnel at the top of the company and we were unceremoniously dumped.

Virtually nothing remains of the band except, I think, a video we made called Ships on the Clyde which is on YouTube. Brian continued with music, playing guitar with The Big Dish and later touring with the likes of Marianne Faithful but I went off in another direction.

At the time, you think these things in your life are a waste but later you realise you have gained skills from them. Getting up on stage and having the confidence to stand behind a mike helped in the next part of my life, which was teaching.

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Teaching

I GOT tired of being skint and Ellen, who was a nurse, was supporting us so I decided to go into teaching which was something I’d said I would never do. It turned out that I absolutely loved it!

It’s magic – the best job in the world. I loved the kids, loved the energy in schools.

Teaching is a performance and being a good teacher is performing to the toughest audience in the world. Taking a group of unruly, disinterested kids and seeing that flame coming to light in them was wonderful.

I fell into it by accident and it could have been a disaster for me but it wasn’t. It was life affirming and I became the person I am as a consequence of what I discovered in myself through teaching.

All the things that are valued in the business world, such as project management, the ability to deliver on time and the ability to speak to groups – all the things that teachers do on a daily basis and aren’t given credit for – all these skills have stood me in really good stead.

I was an art teacher for 12 years and head of art at St Aloysius’ College for 10 of them. People may imagine that working in a private school is easier, and perhaps it is in terms of discipline, but there are all sort of parental pressures and other issues to deal with.

A nervous breakdown

THIS sounds like a negative but it’s not. As much as I loved teaching it almost killed me, and I had a complete nervous breakdown. I was still head of the department but it had become a monster because of its own success. It had gone from being a small department to one where almost every kid in the school was taking art. It just wasn’t set up for the numbers and the pressure just built and built until I eventually became unstuck.

At the time, I had already begun to build a reputation as an artist and had won a couple of big prizes, including the MacFarlane Prize. I wanted to believe I could be an artist but could not see a way that could ever happen.

When it all came apart it came apart spectacularly. I lost all my hair in a period of about six weeks. If I had had a heart attack I would probably have looked the same afterwards and just tried to carry on but this was so visual no-one could fail to see I was f*****.

With Ellen’s support, I finished with teaching and decided to concentrate on art. It takes an enormously strong woman to cope with what had happened to me and be willing to support me even when she could see I was quite unwell.

I looked pragmatically at what I needed to earn each month for my dream of being an artist full time to be a reality.

What I did not factor in was the difference between what my work was worth as a teacher who painted and what it was worth as a full time artist. It almost tripled in value overnight so the numbers took care of themselves.

I also had an explosion of energy. Teaching had been soaking up most of it, so when I stopped I was able to make lots of paintings. Pretty much whatever I did something would come from it so that from the earliest days my work was being picked up by the likes of Ewan McGregor. I went from a standing start to quite a high level in a short time.

Losing my sister

BEFORE I started art school I lost Elaine, one of my two sisters. She died from cancer when she was 14 and I was about 18. It was horrendous, something like that changes everything you think you know about the world. It has changed my perspective on everything that has come after.

Watching that happen to her is as bad as it gets, so it was like a benchmark for everything that happened to me. It broke my heart and had a profound effect on the family but in many respects it taught me that life itself is precious. I have always tried to focus on the nuts and bolts and the here and now as a consequence of that. When something like that happens, you realise that any plans you make for the future are a joke.

Indyref

UP until that point I was not really engaged in politics. Although I had already got to know Alex Salmond quite well as he had one of my big paintings, The Rowan, in his office in the Scottish Parliament.

When it was announced that there was to be a referendum on Scottish independence I probably started off as a No voter but I immersed myself in it all.

As I became fully engaged with it and took a proper look, I realised that what we had been led to believe about Scotland’s place in the Union was untenable. There are so many holes in what we had been told it’s ridiculous.

I am not a door chapper but I did help to raise money by donating art works and I became a member of the SNP. I did a portrait of Nicola Sturgeon and became friendly with a lot of MPs and MSPs. I remain engaged and people know that if they ask me to become involved I will say yes.

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Oil paint

I LIVE and breathe the stuff. I know it intuitively, the way Andy Murray understands the ball and the tennis racket.

I was first introduced to it at art school but another ridiculous factor about art school is that people tell you to make paintings but how do you do that if you don’t have any money to buy paint? My experience of oil at art school was fraught to say the least as I had to eke it out.

It was only when I was a teacher that I started to be able to afford it and then we created my first studio in the loft and I was able to really engage with it. You need space as it is a messy medium.

Oil is utterly linked to everything I do. It is the most versatile painting medium in the world. You can put it on as you would a watercolour or you can trowel it on and everything in between. It is an incredible medium, which is why since its invention around the 14th century, any significant work has always been in oil. It’s the king.

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Tartan Week, NYC, 2015

IN 2015 the Scottish Government asked me to put something together for an exhibition in New York to celebrate Tartan Week. Initially it was to be an exhibition of my paintings but I decided to create 15 portraits of Scots who already had a presence in the States. I painted people such as Billy Connolly, Alan Cumming, Kirsty Wark and Ewan McGregor. Called A Brush With Inspiration, it was held on the Glasgow Caledonian University premises in New York which is an incredible space.

The Scottish Government had put a certain amount of money towards it and in fairness to them I took it further than originally anticipated, so ended up having to fund a lot of it myself. It almost put us under.

I had hoped it would make my name known in the States – it didn’t but the publicity back home was over the register. It was quite amazing and took me up a notch in terms of how people perceived me. It also put my name in the hat in terms of any portraits which are being commissioned so it was a massive step up for me.