Merry Christmas to everyone who checks out this blog. I know it hasn't made for the most uplifting reading of late, so too that my forays into surrealism are all too obviously the product of a deranged mind full of painkillers and, latterly, a glass or two of vino tinto, but the fact that so many people have been tuning in to my travails and getting in touch makes everything that little bit easier to deal with. I'm stoked and sincerely grateful for the support I've received.
I've had a good day so far, with a visit from Mr Aerial Attack and his excellent kids Frank and OIive and - touch wood - pain that is eminently manageable. The left leg isn't behaving correctly but I spoke with an old doctor friend and he assures me that the neurological problems I'm experiencing at present are completely normal after a cervical discectomy and fusion. The fact that the leg did work perfectly straight after the op remains a very good sign. As and when the bruising in my neck and spine settles down, it may well be that the leg is OK again. Each day that goes by brings me closer to that point and, ultimately, to riding a wave again.
I'm off for a walk with Karen and the dogs in a moment (not a long one - my range is somewhat limited), then it'll be time to wrap presents. Before I sign off let me relay an amazing piece of generosity by Newquay-based artist Sam Walsh. I met Sam with Tup a few months back. We interviewed him for a profile in Cornwall Today (which appears below). We both thought Sam was a great bloke and an incredibly talented painter, too. I wrote the words, Tup did the pictures, and I looked forward to bumping into Sam at some stage in the future. Today, after an email out of the blue from a friend of Sam's a few days ago, a beautiful print of one of Sam's works arrived in the post. This is a really kind and touching gesture and it's also one that I'm imbuing with symbolic significance: like the surfer in Sam's painting, I will ride a wave again.
I hope everyone out there has a great Christmas and an excellent surf-filled 2010. Vaya con dios and read on for the piece on Sam, whose work can be seen at the Driftwood Gallery in Newquay. The image above comes via Beach Bum.
Interview with Sam Walsh for July 09 Issue of Cornwall Today.
“I remember standing above
Great Western beach in the Sixties, looking down at the sea, and my life
changed in that moment,” says Newquay-based artist Sam Walsh, his eyes lighting
up at the memory. “I watched some surfers riding waves beneath the great
cathedral of the cliffs, and had an epiphany. That was it. I knew I’d be a
surfer, and that surfing would influence a huge part of my life forever more.”
Fast forward 40 years,
and Walsh makes an appearance in a new book on British surfing. He can be found
on page 164 of surfing historian Roger Mansfield’s book The Surfing Tribe, an account of the development of the domestic
surf scene up to 1990. Walsh is bottom turning on a clean, sparkling wave at
Great Western in a photograph which neatly distils the early innocence of
British surfing. But if Walsh is no longer able to surf owing to problems with
his knees, the ‘Sport of Kings’ continues to play a major role in his art.
At 62, Walsh is
enjoying deserved recognition for paintings which often utilise motifs from
surfing, but which, for many years, he preferred not to exhibit. His reluctance
stems from a complex relationship with art, albeit one that guarantees
integrity in everything he creates. As Walsh explains: “I was the school
artist. I’d look at the other kids filling page upon page of text books with
writing, but instead I would feel compelled to draw. I was obsessed with art
for as long as I could remember.”
But allied with his
natural talent as a draughtsman, Walsh felt compromised by a condition now
understood to be a learning disability but which, in his childhood, was often put
down to mere laziness: dyslexia. “My trouble with spelling was treated pretty
savagely by my teachers,” he recalls, and when viewing Walsh’s naïve,
iridescent paintings, it is impossible not to conclude that a major motivation
for his art was the desire to be heard, to communicate. Walsh readily agrees: “For
me, the ancient cave paintings sum up what art is about. They were created by
people who didn’t know whether they’d be alive or dead by the end of a day, who
felt a deep need to make their mark.”
That Walsh is making
his mark in the Cornish, not to say national, art scene is undeniable. Thanks
to the intervention of a friend called Yvette – “she insisted I start showing
my work,” he says – he recently overcame his lifelong shyness and now exhibits
with the Driftwood Gallery in its premises in Newquay, Truro and Ilfracombe. Justin Easton, who
manages the Driftwood in Newquay, cannot speak highly enough of Walsh. “Sam’s
an incredible man,” he says. “He’s warm, intelligent and articulate, and he’s
produced an incredible body of work which the public is only now getting to
see.”
Walsh was born to
Irish parents in Liverpool in 1947. His father
had been a merchant seaman, who then worked at Liverpool docks, and Walsh, who
left Liverpool aged 18, is very much a man
hewn of the city’s tough, dockland environment. He is open, straight-talking
and uncompromising, and, as he demonstrated in his teens, entirely his own man.
He left Liverpool for the bright lights of London just as The Rolling Stones and The
Beatles were hitting their stride, drawn to the capital because he wanted
to be a part of the huge cultural upheaval underway in the Sixties. It was
there, while staying at the Boys’ Mission
on Drury Lane,
that he got his first glimpse of surfing.
“There was a
Californian staying there too, all bleached blonde hair and muscles,” recalls
Walsh. “He looked different to everyone else. We got talking and he told me
what surfing was.” Ever curious, Walsh immediately set off for the nearest
library to learn more, only to find that he was ahead of his time: “I asked for
a book on surfing and got given one on water skiing instead,” he laughs. “I don’t
think there were any books on surfing back then. I was too embarrassed to give
it back.”
What has become of the
stray waterskiing book is not known, but around this time news of Cornish
surfing began to filter through to London.
Walsh took the first train out of the city that he could find, to emerge a few
hours later at Great Western. He was at once smitten by what he saw, and threw
himself into the nascent Cornish surf scene, one comprising legendary
characters such as Mansfield, Jack Lydgate, Chris Jones, Charles Williams and
Alan ‘Fuz’ Bleakley. “They were my heroes then, and they are to this day,” says
Walsh, who took any work going to make ends meet and finance his new passion.
His first board, a Bob Head longboard, was bought thanks to a hotel job, and
Walsh is as animated as a child when he casts his mind back to those first few
days in Cornwall.
“I should have kissed the ground, I was so happy,” he says.
Walsh went on to work
for Bilbo, the iconic Newquay surfing company derived from the Christian names of the late Bill Bailey and Bob Head, though for
much his life his primary source of income was as a builder. He married and had
three children – Jason, Emma, and Nellie – and providing for them, rather than
surfing, became his priority. Later in life Walsh worked in local radio and
undertook a two-year art course at Camborne
Art College.
Throughout Walsh’s life, there was art.
Walsh, the school artist, carried on making marks regardless of what he was
doing or where he was. As he says, “If people asked ‘Can you write me
something?’, I’d paint it. Art was never a monetary thing for me.” Far from it, for Walsh simply refused
to show, still less sell, his work for years. Indeed, such is his reluctance to
part with work that he’s taken to doing the lottery. “If I win, I won’t have to
sell another painting,” he says, only half-joking.
But it looks as if Walsh may have to get
used to letting go of his paintings. Easton,
who sold two for over £3,000 each at the Bristol Affordable Art Fair, says that
enquiries about Walsh just keep coming. A well-known celebrity chef recently
offered £12,000 for one painting, though in this instance, Walsh wouldn’t sell.
The chef, and Walsh’s growing legion of admirers, might be luckier at the
forthcoming ‘Coast to Coast’ collection in Driftwood’s Newquay gallery. As well
as showcasing a number of coastal artists, Walsh’s surf-saturated, vivacious
acrylic artworks will take centre stage.
Walsh, who lives in a house as crammed with
curios and memorabilia as its owner is modest, doesn’t quite believe his good
fortune. Even with prestigious exhibitions in St Ives and at a French chateau
in Le Puech De Barrayre, Aveyron under his belt, he still feels as if someone
else, not the boy from Liverpool, is being
talked about. “I’m 62, but inside I’m still a child of eight,” he says. “I
paint to feel better about myself and the world, not to make money or because I
want everyone to know my name.” Or, as he puts it, “What’s wrong with beauty?”
Looking at a Sam Walsh original – ‘Snow Falling on Eden’, perhaps, or ‘Dance of the Obby-Oss’ –
the answer is, decidedly, nothing.
