Psychovertical. Andy Kirkpatrick

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СКАЧАТЬ as he was old enough. I understood now why my dad, his dad, and his dad before him had joined. There simply wasn’t anything else they could do to satisfy the urge for a life less ordinary and depressing than this. The only problems were that I hated ironing, I doubted I was tough enough, and I feared I was too much of a dreamer to hack it.

      The only thing I knew I was good at was drawing. I had so many ideas in my head, and it seemed that only a pencil offered some way of letting them out. It was this ability to draw that had always pulled me through the hardest times. No matter how bad my maths test results were, no matter how many red underlinings there were on the pages of my English books, at least I could draw.

      There was never any talk of university or college at school. I was so ignorant of higher education, I thought ‘Oxbridge’ was a university, but I began to focus on trying to get into art college. I had no idea what I would learn there, or how I could possibly make a living, but none of that mattered as long as I had some grace before I entered the crush of the real world.

      Exams came and I got O-levels in art, history, technical drawing and, amazingly, English, probably due to a story I wrote in answer to the essay question. Entitled ‘The Dream’, it was about what the bomb-aimer of the Enola Gay dreamed of as he slept on the way to bomb Hiroshima. My head had always been full of stories but, unable to articulate them in any way that was legible to a reader, I’d stuck to drawing cartoons. On that day, I had somehow shown enough talent, despite my misspellings and poor grammar, to earn a grade.

      I failed my maths O-level, but I signed on to go to sixth form, even though my friends told me not to as I’d then become ‘overqualified’. Some of the teachers, more realistically, doubted I was clever enough. I doubted it myself, and so picked my strongest subjects, history and art, for A level and tried to take my maths O-level again, having been told it was vital if I wanted to go to college. I failed it at the end of the first year, and again in my final exams, along with both art and history, thus proving my teachers right. I really was an idiot, but at least I wasn’t going to have the problem of being overqualified.

      Then I got an interview for a foundation course at Hull College of Art, a one-year intensive course where you would be taught how to paint, sculpt, take pictures, and see if you were good enough to go on to a full course at the art college. Without an A-level in art, and no maths qualifications, it didn’t look good, but I collected up my pictures and went to the interview.

      The room was set up with tables where people could show their work, and the crapness of my schooling became apparent as I looked around at proper canvases, sculptures, framed photos and assorted offerings by trendy-looking kids from all over Humberside. My table held a collection of pencil and pen pictures, mostly on a sci-fi theme, my main source of artistic instruction having come from comics and film posters. The lecturer walked around the room, talking to each person and looking at their work, until eventually she came to my table. You could tell she wasn’t impressed either by me or by my work, which looked neither trendy, intelligent nor artistic. This just wasn’t my world. Then she focused on a picture that stood out amongst the rest. It was a dark hand-drawn picture on a long piece of white card I’d found, and off-cut. It was a depiction of the inside of a whale, with organs, ribs, intestines. The picture was carefully drawn to look as real as possible, and I’d created a kind of surreal mishmash of shadow and light. What stood out, more in the centre of the picture, was the pure white tip of a harpoon, which created an interesting composition of dark and light, soft and hard lines. It was so different, and frankly so odd, that she picked it up and asked me about it. I told her I’d got the idea after going to the nearby whaling museum and seen the harpoons on display, and imagined what they would look like when they were inside a whale.

      For the first time since I’d left junior high school, I felt a teacher look at me and see some potential there. She made a note, telling me it was very interesting, and moved on.

      A few days later I got a letter telling me that I had made it onto the course. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

      The one-year course was intensive, and I found myself amongst keen, intelligent and well-educated students, and, more importantly, teachers who seemed to dote on us and would give us more praise than we could handle. The difference was dizzying, and I know in that one year I learned and grew more than I had in seven years of senior school. Most importantly, I was exposed to the positivity of the other students, who seemed to have so many more reference points than myself. Overnight my world of films, videos and science fiction was replaced with one of books, music and the normal things of a teenager’s life.

      I noticed there were other people like me on the course, who had held onto their drawing skills, found themselves here, and now felt equally out of their depth. Very soon most of them had left, condemning art as being ‘up its own arse’, but for me life had never been more amazing. My schools had been all boys, but now I found myself working next to girls, who shone and brought a sparkle and electricity to life.

      As the course progressed, so did my work. I had no money for paint, neither oils nor cheaper acrylics, let alone canvases to paint on, so I made do with the contents of the ‘free cupboard’, painting on sheets of wood with a mixture of PVA glue and powder paint, which, although unconventional, did make them stand out from the other students’ work. I began doing abstract paintings on a biological theme, based on what someone had told me: that ‘the human body disintegrates at 12 miles per hour’. These pictures were all red fury, often with sand mixed in to give texture, and although odd for me they had a kind of pleasing composition. Very often I would just work by instinct, with no clear idea of why I put paint here or there, and it was only afterwards that I would have to justify it. Sometimes it’s refreshing to know that you do what you do just because it feels right.

      Around me I would see other students who seemed to have prodigious talents, yet made so little use of their time, whereas I gave 100 per cent, feeling my head strain as my potential, pent up for so long, was drawn out. The culmination of the year was to get into a degree course, something that not only would allow me to carry on this amazing and thrilling adventure, but also to get a grant and move away. The only sticking point was the fact that I had no real qualifications. The course ended and I got an ‘Upper Credit With Distinction’. I thought that with this I would wing it at the interview the following week at Sheffield University, one of the most prestigious universities in the country, and, more importantly, in a city I knew had good climbs close by. I was going to fulfil my promise to return.

      A few weeks after the interview, I got a letter from Sheffield University. I felt that I was on a roll. I was amazing. I was talented. Then I ripped open the envelope and saw they didn’t want me. In that moment my world came crashing down. I was worthless again.

      ‘You’ll just have to get a job,’ said my mum, ‘or sign on the dole.’

      I felt sick.

      Within a few weeks I did sign on, and then I moved out to live in a squat with a friend, unable to live at home any more, feeling distant, alienated. My stupid dreams of going to art college had been dashed. My only skill had come to nothing.

      I threw away my paints and pencils, and my paper and sketch books, and from that moment, for years and years, I didn’t draw another thing.

      FIVE

      A very brave man

       Pitch 1 New Dawn

      I carried my first load up to the base of the wall in the cool of pre-dawn. The approach was short, a few hundred metres of track leading through forest to the base of El Cap, then up some zigzagging paths to the bottom of the Dawn Wall.

      I walked slowly, picking out the track with my headtorch which cast scary shadows from the bushes СКАЧАТЬ