Hero to zero...

See that chap in the painting? It’s a self portrait by Julian Merrow-Smith. I went to school with him. I can just see the boy I remember in his face.

He was simply Merrow-Smith at school, and I was Height. We didn’t use our first names at Lord Bill’s. Not even best friends called each other by their first names. It was either surname or nickname. I knew him by his surname, Merrow-Smith - I didn’t know his nickname if he had one, and I didn’t know that he would go on to become everything that I’ve ever wanted to be.

And that I wouldn’t.

Julian Merrow-Smith stole my life.

He was a couple of years younger than me and I don’t remember him being ‘good at art’ at Lord William’s. But he must have been. He went to North Oxfordshire College of Art to do his foundation year, as I had a few years earlier. I was ‘good at art’ and after ‘foundation’ I went on to Wolverhampton Poly to do a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art. He followed me there to do fine art a few years later. We had almost identical educations - maybe he was copying me, maybe I was his hero at school - I doubt it though.

He must have arrived at Wolverhampton Poly just as I was leaving. The big difference between us was that he went on to complete his degree in Fine Art and I transferred to graphics after my first year. I don’t really know why I transferred to graphics other than I didn’t think that I was fitting in with my performance art and paint slinging BA course colleagues.

Since my recent ‘actual’ visit to Thame I’ve been continuing to wander around my home town in the ‘virtual’. Surfing here, linking there - and I stumbled across Merrow-Smith on the Old Thamensian web site as a link.

He’s living in Provence and has married a cellist. Yes, a cellist, and yes, that Provence in southeastern France, the Provence that is on the Mediterranean, just by Italy. Beautiful, sunny Provence with his cellist wife - and to make things even worse (for me, not him), as if Provence and a cellist wife were not riches enough for any man, he is also (God how I hate to say this) an abso-bloody-lutely brilliant, gifted, skilled, talented, accomplished painter (damn his observant painter's eyes).

Not only does he paint vibrant landscape, masterly still life, and superb portraits, he lays down paint in a way that I try to do, but always and continually fail with. (May his brushes lose their bristles and his beret blow away in the wind).

Either Merrow-Smith didn’t care about the other students at Wolverhampton Poly or the course changed direction just as I left. Either way; he stuck to it and I gave up – which makes him a hero in my book – and me? Well, just call me zero.

Julian Merrow-Smith- Hero to zero.

Why, oh why did I transfer to Graphics? Why didn’t I stick to my painting? I wasn’t bad and I’d have become better if I’d stuck at it - this has become the BIGGEST REGRET OF MY LIFE - and yes I am shouting…I’m shouting very, VERY LOUDLY!

It isn’t only his fantastic painting either. To top it all he’s come up with the brilliant idea of painting a small picture each day and auctioning it on the internet – his own arty e-bay. Every night at 10pm the auction begins and hundreds of people log on to his ‘Postcards from Provence’ painting blog and bid for the four by six inch ‘postcard’ oils. They are currently selling from between £100 to £500 a time! He’s cracked it! He’s painting money and enjoying himself whilst he’s doing it.

I HATE HIM! No I don’t - but I could hate him if I didn’t admire his skill and his art so much.

Listen up Merrow-Smith. You are a hero, my hero. Well done.

Take a look at his work, it is superb and it should have been mine.

http://shiftinglight.com/archive.php