Monumental Word Paintings

What Started It All

My family moved from the United Kingdom to Southern California. My father had been stationed at Bentwaters Air Force base and was transferred to March Air force base.

As a family, we dove right in to the Southern California lifestyle and in 1966 moved to Huntington Beach. We did all the things that young family’s did at that time, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios and Marine Land to camping in Joshua Tree National park and the gold rush country in the High Sierra Mountains.

We had late night bone fires at the beach with “newly descoved mexican food” and it seemed as if the music of the time was always on in the background as a sound track in our lives.

I started surfing at 7 and skateboarding the next year. The free range childhood, no holds bar open culture of Southern California was a dynamic colour filled dramatic change from the blue and grey scheduled life of being a military (air force brat) child.

A very early memory that sticks out is when my mother took me to the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. As we drove she told me the two of us were “going to see some very special things that she wanted to show me and meet some cool people.”

"We looked at works by Andy Warhol, Wallace Berman, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin, John Mason, Kenneth Price, Llyn Foulkes, Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha."

Later that day I found myself in a garage in the Hollywood hills watching Billy Al Bengston and Ed Ruscha painting surfboards while my mom sat with others from the gallery opening sipping wine, laughing and enjoying the sunset over the Los Angeles Basin. On the way home I asked if we could stop and buy some art supplies. The next day we did:

I still own the painting and it hangs today in the Soho loft.

The result was “RED”