BIOGRAPHY

My Brand is derived from who I am, who I want to be and who people perceive me to be.

I am an artist, compelled to paint. I see the canvas as “an arena in which to act”. I bring to the moment of making marks, my thoughts and feelings in that moment conscious and unconscious, I also bring my partial knowledge of the canon of art history, my life history, my identity.

I have been described as a contemporary abstract expressionist, I am not sure whether I like or want this label. I think I capture something of my experience of living in North Wales in 2020, it also relates very much to the global tribe and what sense I make of my present existence.

I am basically an existentialist. I emphasise individual existence, freedom and choice. I define my own meaning in life. I acknowledge things happen, fate, and you engage with them.

I think Albert Camus got it largely right, when he said you have only one choice in life, to commit suicide, if you do not, you engage fully with what life throws at you. I personally see this as joyous, love your fate. Trust all joy.

My Brand is who I am.

I am a 65 year old man, (66 in June) who has lived continuously in North Wales since 1989. Apart from six months living in Italy in 2011. My family name, Luckock is unusual and derives from my Norman heritage, my ancestors came over to England in 1066 or soon after. I see myself as an Englishman living in Wales. I carry a burden, a discomfort from the history of Wales and the subjugation by the English. I have to face the fact that I have not learnt Welsh and though fairly well versed in Welsh history, I only have a partial involvement in Welsh Culture.

What other aspects of my identity are significant. Well I am heterosexual, this does have a significance as an artist, you cannot escape your sexuality, you are conscious of it and maybe sometimes unconscious of it when figures, bodies or parts of bodies appear in pictures. Your desire and arousal are within paintings to a lesser or greater extent.

I am white and male and have entered the final years of my life. I am privileged in that I was well educated, earning a reasonable living during my adult life.

I am also a husband, father to three children and grandfather to one child. Family is important to me.

I was born in Hillingdon on the western side of London, moved as a young child with my parents to north Buckinghamshire to a small rural village of Great Linford. I had two brothers and a sister. My mother suffered from ill health and died from cancer when I was nine years old, my father prior to this had spent a period in jail for stealing money from the post office he ran alongside the village shop. Both incidents were a trauma for me. I was resilient because of the love I experienced from both parents particularly my mother in those early years. I had a largely feral experience as a young child roaming the fields, woods, river and canal banks.

After my mother’s death, I spent a period in a children’s home in Bletchley and then was shipped off to a State Boarding School in Buckingham because I passed the eleven plus exam. I went to the Royal Latin Grammar School, I was a challenging and not always happy student, but to my and many others surprise I was made Head Prefect of the school in my sixth form years. I enjoyed art, but at 14 was encouraged and accepted to study subjects considered more academic. I remember particularly making a 16 mm film and drawing and painting studies Degas like on ballerinas in my last Art year.

I particularly enjoyed sport and the outdoors, history and literature and went on to University of Birmingham to study Physical Education and Geography. The Physical Education Department was held in high status at the time, as the only academic department for Physical Education, I remember people were sceptical that I would get a place, competition was fierce.

On leaving university I needed to earn a living, I worked for one year as an unqualified teacher in an independent school in the Quantock Hills in Somerset, did a year’s PGCE in Outdoor Education in Bangor, North Wales. I then went to Belfast at the height of the “troubles” in the 70’s to lead a charity providing training opportunities for young people and running residential experiences for children. We were across community organisation working with republicans and loyaIists. I married my first wife.

I returned to England and worked for Save the Children Fund, leading project in Liverpool, in particular the Children’s Help Unit Merseyside, in Toxteth, at the time of the rioting in the city. I became heavily involved in the trade union movement and Labour Party. I was elected as a Labour councillor and was at the forefront of the campaigns against the Conservative Government who wanted to manage the decline of Liverpool.
I was one of the 47 Labour councillors who were disqualified and surcharged for setting a late rate, as part of our resistance. My first marriage failed, I had a daughter with a new partner and we married, we then had a son.

During this whole period I continued to be active in the outdoor world, leading expeditions internationally ( Africa, Australia and Europe) and spending time in Scotland, the Lake and Peak District and North Wales.

I was always in employment, working subsequently as an advisory teacher in Cheshire and then as an Educational Adviser and Consultant. I always preferred working with the most needy children, young people and families, I built particularly expertise re trauma and for many years was a member and then co-ordinator of the Critical Incident Response Team.

I also continued my studies obtaining further qualifications including a Masters.

I moved to Abergele, Wales in 1989. I continued to work in Cheshire. The main trigger to the move was the death of my father in law and my mother in law not coping and needing support. Underneath we were glad to get away from Liverpool, I was very prominent in the political scene and likely to face imprisonment from the poll tax campaign.

We had a further daughter in Wales and became committed to making Wales our home.

During this whole period I felt my creativity was used a great deal, maybe not in drawing and painting, I did a lot of writing and was required daily to use my creative skills and knowledge to find solutions, ways forward.

I lived in Wales and travelled to Cheshire for many years, I also undertook quite a lot of training and corporate work with International Banks, Telecoms companies and other multinationals and Public Sector Organisations.

My working life was dominated by emotional labour, listening and talking too children, young people and adults struggling to resolve issues of living.

Like many people after the financial crisis, I lived a precarious existence before being made redundant in 2011 by Cheshire West and Chester Council. It was then I started to think much more about how I would maintain and enhance my creative desire.

I did a foundation course in Art at Llandrillo College obtaining a Distinction and then moved into my studio to paint.

What do I want to be? I want to be able to continue to paint and create. I would really like a private or public gallery to commit to me exhibiting my works regularly. I want the opportunity to gain observers of my work and have a discourse about the stories behind the pictures. I want to sell my works.

Who people perceive me to be?

This is a little difficult. I am self aware but feel many people are reluctant to say exactly what they think of my work or me. My hunch is that some observers like aspects of my work, they also say “ I do not think I could live with that on my wall at home”. They see me as disruptive, challenging. Addressing problematic issues like the beauty of Ezra Pound’s poetry but acknowledging he was a fascist and anti-Semite. Whereas my intent is to show the fragmentation of human experience attempting to work out how history (as fragment) and personality ( as shattered by modern existence) can cohere in the ‘field’ of poetry and art. My Morfa Rhuddlan series, as dense in what they show, the way the past leaves it’s traces in the landscape and the material world. The intimacy of the human figure or portrait, that is sometimes unsettling to the observer.

Somebody said to me the other day, you are quite academic and intellectual when talking about your work, I was not sure whether it was a compliment or criticism. It felt like they were saying I was challenging. The same person said you appear fearless it what you paint.

When at college I was left to get on with my work, I felt lecturers were reluctant to give too much feedback, maybe I was so self reflective on what I was doing, they did not feel they needed to comment. I think they could have provided more technical feedback as I was learning the craft by trial and error. I think they liked the way I could relate my work to the canon of art history. 

In the end they must of liked my work because I got a distinction.

Hopefully from all of this you can get an essence of my brand. The biggest challenge is to see how my brand fits within the contemporary art market. I am not a twenty or thirty somebody living their existence, I am an older white heterosexual Englishman living in Wales and though in many ways at ease with that and the art I produce. There is of course an existential angst that comes through. My work acknowledges in some way that reduced power and status, whether it is a “shattering of modern existence” or ongoing evolution, there is a wish to challenge people to think deeply about my work and how and if it relates to their existence.

When I observe your work, I am experiencing an existential angst, a protest, I see humour but a discomforted humour, also fantasy, creating a world that reflects on present reality but takes you somewhere else. I mean this in a constructive way, your paintings to me are seeking a global tribe different to how we are, by caricaturing, satirising how we are but also leading beyond that. In a strange way a bit like those fellow citizens looking for another faith that provides a meaning. As you know I think you create your own meaning by doing the really scary stuff of talking to yourself about your truth that only you know.

Massive editing required. However, you have challenged me to describe my Brand so this is the first bash at it.

I suppose I want to say to potential purchasers, if you want to start to make sense of your contemporary existence, buy one of my pictures, put it on your wall and by observing intently you may find new meaning in your life. Is that too pretentious?

What parts, if any, will attract those people with disposal income willing to spend a few hundred pounds? That is the next challenge.