Wood 2

I spent four years studying Painting in the early 1970's.
I both enjoyed and gained a lot from the experience.
Art School training in drawing and other skills provides
an invaluable foundation on which to build and develop
ideas over a lifetime.

But towards the end of the course I began to have serious misgivings.
It seemed to me that what I was doing didn't connect either to my upbringing or to how I wanted to live.
I couldn't see how a working class person could
possibly afford to be an artist.
I was starting to hate the narrow, elitist world of art.
In short I was becoming alienated.
And so...... I got out.

I did a series of hard physical jobs- dustman,
hotel night cleaner, factory worker- that now,
in retrospect, seemed like an act of contrition.
I stopped doing any creative work.
I got on with my life.

About five years later, I was living in Orkney and
I saw an advertisment in the local paper for a joinery/woodworking class at the local school.
I signed up and learnt about handtools and
woodworking machinery.
We made doors,sash-windows and gates.
Useful things.

But on one particular Friday afternoon we were
given a small piece of oak and we each turned
a tool handle. I immediately feel in love with the
lathe. It had everything I was searching for-
I was sure I could teach myself how to turn and
I could work in the material that I loved.
Woodturning is both a traditional skill and can
also be an expressive medium. I could develop in
a way that I felt comfortable with.

Everything fell into place - the past, the present
and a future.
I was the master of my own fate.

And that was when I decided to buy a lathe.

Wood :: [ 1 ] < 2

© Copyright Hugh Leishman 2006