Andrew Tift – Age 11 to 13 – (The Lost Paintings)
August 10th, 2008
The Local council sent a letter to my mom’s house a few months ago informing her that she was entitled to free loft insulation to keep her bills down and help the environment which was very kind of them. Last week my brother and I spent a day at her house emptying the loft item by item through the small square hole in the ceiling. I suspected that there may be some of my old pictures up there but I had no recollection of the prolific output that had poured out. There were bags full of stuff and looking through them I could actually remember drawing some of them when I was 11. What the hell was going through my mind at that tender age I can’t quite grasp today but I’d certainly entered some kind of fantacy world. There seems to be a series of themes like monsters, ghosts, cars and rock stars.
Ken Dodd always says that we forget how to be children with the pressures of adulthood and leave that all behind. Picasso said something quite similar in that we are all born artists but we just get it knocked out of us… I’m sure they’re right. No matter how primitive and crap they look I can remember the pleasure and escapism that they brought in the tedium of half term and the long summer holidays.
Entry Filed under: Art