Here is where it all begins

The purpose of this blog is to record what promises to be a fairly pivotal chapter in my life, which started around two days ago. After spending the past eight years (since I left school) as far away from institutionalised places of learning as possible, I am now making a full U-turn and returning to the world I spent so long running away from. But I am not doing your average undergraduate degree - I am starting a three year BA(hons) degree in Puppetry at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Until about a year and a half ago the mysterious cultural undercurrent of Puppetry had neither entered my thoughts nor caught my attention. I was just beginning a one year Art and Design diploma, to see where it would take me - I always knew it would take me somewhere. In many ways it was a rather harrowing and upsetting year for me. During my time away from schools and universities - living around Spain, soaking up parts of Morocco and later Mexico, I felt like I was truly beginning to tap into my own natural creativity - in fact my whole lifestyle was designed to support it in the best possible way. It was childlike, un-thought out, it grew in an unplanned, meandering way and the sense of happiness and, I suppose, inner peace that it gave me was huge. During my wanderings through places I started to recognise an affinity with craft traditions, things which took time, patience, love and extraordinary dedication. And at the same time I discovered that the amazing artistic creations I kept stumbling upon, and seemed to be looking for, on roadsides, up hills, outside peoples' houses, had a name, which I could use to search the media for endless other tantalising examples - Outsider Art. Art made by individuals outside the sphere of formal artistic practice - untrained, unrelated to financial gain, born of a private passion and vision.

This photo was taken on a roadside in Nevada, USA. The creator, a man called Slim Selems, died recently and a friend was displaying his four 'sculptures' in the yard of his mechanic workshop.

But I'm digressing. My one-year Art Diploma showed me, with bittersweet clarity, that pinning my hopes on the formal art world as a way to express myself would only cause me upset. The sincerity, the feeling of the kind of creativity I had discovered seemed to be a cause of great embarrassment with my tutors. What they wanted from me was mental enquiry, not romantic, gushy, twee outpourings of expression. Apparently it is not good to give way to feelings in the contemporary art world - such sincerity only runs the grave risk of rejection and ridicule. Although I managed, finally, to create a piece that embodied my outlook, it was a struggle from start to finish and I knew my days in this kind of environment were numbered.