story – Page 2 – Ian Guy

And why Jeremy Clarkson stopped us being Pirates!

Quite often when we are trading at shows people will ask us what Ian gets up to when we aren’t at an event? What happens on a daily basis? What is a day like in the life of an artist? Sometimes I will be asked what part I play, what is it like “Living with the artist”? I never know how to answer really because it’s definitely not the romantic vision some might have.

Ian suggested a few months ago that maybe “We” could possibly put something down in writing, he thought it could make more sense than the drivel that comes out of our mouths at shows!

Okay so what would I write? The most interesting things that happen in the studio are the result of all that is confined to the space between Ian’s ears and wouldn’t I just love to pop there for the day and have a good look around, possibly come back to my world needing a lie down, a massage, and a few shots of something strong! I will never have what Ian has, I believe it was something he was born with. It’s personal, it’s vastly complicated, emotional, and so many other things that only Ian could unfold in a wonderfully descriptive way and it would just flow from him and make complete sense. So my argument is that surely he is the man for the job. His argument “I do drawing not writing and I’m not very comfortable talking about myself”

He asked if it could possibly be some kind of article for the blog on his website, he says it could help to “keep it alive”. He gave me a couple of titles to choose from and I laughed because I felt like a kid in school again.
Anyway I’ve given in, not because he nags so much but because he does this weird thing with his eyes, a bit like the snake from Jungle book, and I’m sure in that space between his ears he also has stored waves of persuasion and once he finds a victim there is no chance of escape! I didn’t give in easily though, oh no! there was a fair amount of moaning in an already defeated way, something along the lines of how a kid would act when asked to clean the bath for the first time. “I can’t do it, I just can’t think of anything about our day that would be worth writing about! Who is going to read it anyway? What does alive mean? Not sure if I want the responsibility of keeping anything alive!”

So here it is. One thing I’m sure of is it won’t be what Ian expected because I actually have no idea where this is going, so please don’t ask to see me at the end of class.

Back to the question in hand, generally if we aren’t disturbed by the outside world, Ian can spend up to 14 hours in the studio in any one day. He’s always working to a deadline with a list of commissions taking him through to 2020. Most will be gifts for special occasions so he has had to be really strict with his time, something he has had to learn and if I’m honest something he has really struggled with, but to this day he has never missed a deadline even if it has meant going to bed at 5am.

After years of hard work building up the business to where it is now I would say we are in a happy place. Day to day life in the office/studio is pretty routine with the exception of occasionally being sideswiped by the excitement of an offer Ian just can’t refuse. They can arrive by email, post, telephone, good old facebook, and sudden phone calls from people who say “We are in the area, is it possible we could pop in?” It’s always exciting and you never quite know what you are going to get next.

For instance, a while ago we had an email from the very well known and respected Ken Schmidt from The Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop in New York. He commissioned a piece from Ian for inclusion in his ‘Book of Gow’, a double page fold out no less, exciting times! The book is now available to buy in the US and Graham at American Automags here in the UK has been given exclusive distribution rights.

The commissioned artwork for the ‘BOOK OF GOW’

There can be really quiet days, usually in between commissions, when Ian wears his snake eyes and seems to breathe differently, kind of looking through things instead of at them. I have discovered this is when he is creating in his mind. It can happen at any time. Route 66 on a holiday of a lifetime, the inspiration behind a lot of Ian’s paintings, I lost him for a whole three days. I’ve learnt not to take it personally.

We were at school together, I considered him my best friend and he was already a fantastic artist. I kind of had a crush, nothing I would admit to though because I was way too cool. Turns out he felt the same but we went our separate ways at 18 because I did take it personally.

If I would have taken the time to look deeper into what was going on I possibly could have seen that great art doesn’t just emerge from empty minds and maybe things would’ve been different, or maybe not. Our homes were miles apart and whilst I was out drinking with friends and generally misbehaving, Ian was at home alone in his bedroom creating. He was the only child of an extremely possessive mother, his dad was killed when he was just four. He can now see that drawing was his escape, a way of coping.

The first time Ian noticed me at school I was 13 and hula hooping for a charity event, the zip broke on my skirt and it ended up round my ankles. I carried on regardless.

There is no part of me that has any kind of artistic flare, not through want of trying either, but at 14 when it came time to make subject choices I decided I was going to be an artist. I didn’t ever get anywhere near creating anything decent or even recognizable, but by the age of 16 Ian and I were spending a lot of time together, he was studious and mostly well behaved but he had started to join me at my secret skiving locations and I’ve got to admit it felt good to be leading him astray. I remember us talking endlessly about road trips, finding the longest straight road we could in the world to drive down, making it our mission. What vehicle would we choose? How fast would we go? Sleeping in an old pick up under the stars.

I decided to take art at O Level merely for the purpose of being in the same room as Ian and watching him draw, I’d had just about enough of school by then.

What I didn’t expect or understand at that age was the often daily transition from Ian to Artist. It mostly happened somewhere between the skiving place and the art room, I lost him completely to his creativity and there was absolutely nothing I could do to create any kind of distraction.

This became even more evident when we met up again nearly 20 years later and he couldn’t remember me ever taking art as a subject at school, he still can’t , he did admit to being wildly in lust with me though, which kind of made me realise the power of that transition !!

At 18 Ian went off to college and gained a national diploma in Graphic Design, a path he said he had been lead down after leaving school, he admits to not really having a clue where he wanted his art to take him, he just liked drawing. At the time though, in my eyes, he seemed to have a strange kind of confidence. I thought he was sorted, he now says he was just lost.
Ian spent a couple of years after college at the beck and call of his mother and in the Mid 80’s in a desperate bid to be free and gain some kind of independence he bought a Gallery in St Ives Cornwall! (it was the days when you could get a 100% mortgage on projected earnings.) St Ives was somewhere he discovered had held a special place in his dad’s heart too. Ian spent almost 15 years there, it was successful to some extent but his customer base was restricted to tourists and he was painting seascapes just to pay the bills, it didn’t end well.

I had left school, messed around a bit in different jobs. Got married, had a daughter Lucie and when she was just a few months old drove with her to Hungary in my old VW Golf to start a new life. I stayed there until my marriage fell apart 10 years later. Strangely Ian lost his Gallery roughly around the same time as I arrived back in the UK. We were both lost and having separately to start a new chapter in our lives.

Ian and I found each other again in 2002, but that’s another story and I feel like I have gone massively off track.

Hugely insecure, and definitely not at all confident in his abilities as an artist, Ian would subconsciously restrict himself , I believe through a fear of exposing himself to an audience where he would possibly be ridiculed, one negative comment would’ve sent him running for the hills. It frustrated the hell out of me, all those years, all that hard work and he didn’t have a penny to his name either.

The next few years were difficult. Ian helped me run a small business restoring garden statues/ornaments from house clearances, something I had built up since moving back to the UK.

At home in our new flat though I was sorting through boxes and bits and pieces that Ian had brought up from Cornwall and I came across some of his old drawings and paintings in an old suitcase, mostly of cars in beautiful locations. At that point it hit me, I remembered this is what he doodled endlessly in our school books, Hot Rods, Muscle Cars, Chopper Bikes. But Motoring Art wasn’t accepted as art in schools so he’d been restricted.

With my head in the suitcase suitably gobsmacked at what I was seeing I got some kind of weird adrenalin rush, running around the house shouting things like “What the f**k are we doing? What have we been doing? What a f**king cock up!! Come on just believe it you’re f**king awesome now lets get on and do something about it!!” I Scared the Crap out of Ian. I’m sure I saw some of his creativity leak nervously out of the top of his head.

Strangely the same day my sister called and, knowing Ian was into cars and bikes, told us about a bike show that was taking place locally the weekend after next, she thought that Ian might like to check it out. A few days later we bought a small gazebo and traded at the show with some of the paintings and prints from the suitcase. It was a success but not enough of a success to bring a smile to Ian’s face. So I checked out Ian’s car mags and found other shows across the country, car clubs and shows he had followed since he was a kid, venues he had only read about in magazines. Now after almost 15 years of trading at these events up and down the country he still thinks that our more successful shows are just a fluke and he’s still never completely happy with any finished piece or commission. I once asked him why and it took him a few days to answer….

“I think the day I reach the point where I am totally happy will be the day to hang up my brushes, and I’m not ready for that yet”

We have realised however how lucky we are in that we are able to incorporate work with travel. It might not be quite how we had talked about it in the skiving place but through the summer almost every weekend we are travelling to an event or show. We have had the pleasure of meeting some amazing like minded people and there is an understanding, everybody looks out for everybody else, it is what it is and I would never change it. That side of things just evolved for us without effort and we have pleasure in knowing some great people and have made friendships that will last a lifetime. Ian has always been an extremely talented artist but he has struggled with confidence issues, as most artists do. The person Ian is today has a lot to do with the massive appreciation of his work from all of the wonderful people we meet, and I know it sounds a bit sickly but also allowing Ian to be Ian and not just ‘The Artist’.

I can really see that I have gone massively off track, didn’t mean to write so much or go into so much detail on personal histories but I have just read it to Ian and he says he likes it, but is still asking if I could possibly do ‘A day in the life of ’ as it’s what people have been asking for.

So this is where I start moaning again like a kid.

“Oh Ian, I don’t know how to explain what we do through the winter, what do you want me to say? Nothing happens that’s worth talking about really does it? “The winter months can be really long and the days even longer, you concentrate on your commissions and are always working to a deadline. I know it’s always bloody cold here too and we are often up until 3am working because that’s the only time we get any peace. I know you eat too much cake, drink too much coffee, and I drink too much wine, and your constant nose bleeds, what’s that all about?
And when is Keith ever going to leave us alone we only have to leave the house for a minute and he’s there, have you noticed? Where does he actually come from? Do you think he sits there in a bush or something just waiting? I want to clean the windows, have you seen them? Of course you have you can’t actually see out! I can’t go out, he’s just there and he smiles weirdly and keeps stroking me.”

“You sing a lot I could tell people that”

“Do I?”

“Yeah you often sing something that gives away what you are thinking. During your creative blank face phases it’s the only way of telling your mood and it’s actually quite helpful for me to know what I’m dealing with”

“Really?”

“Yes Really. You’re going to make a mental note now and stop doing it aren’t you, I shouldn’t have said anything because it can be quite entertaining too sometimes, you have given away so much”

“Have I, like what?”

“I don’t remember”

“Yeah go on give me an example?”

“Ok Chris Rea, Road to Hell”

“So what did that tell you?”

“I don’t know, couldn’t work that one out ….
The Interlink courier guy is nice, he comes here a lot we could tell people about him. He’s almost always on time you don’t get that often these days. The people opposite are moving out did you know? They’ve only been there a couple of months, what is it with that house? The people before put Christmas lights round their door in July, remember we helped them push that old Gypsy caravan in to their front garden and just when I thought things were getting interesting they took down the Christmas lights and a man called Colin came for the caravan and that was them gone! and where was Keith in all this? It’s just us, he’s not too bothered with anyone else it’s creepy” (Artist frowns in an ‘unsure where I am going with this’ kind of way)

“Hey I could tell people we saw Richard Hammond in Morrisons the other day, and how we actually finished our shopping and sat in the car for twenty minutes just to watch him come out so we could see what car he was driving. Do you think he has a Ford Focus just to stay inconspicuous? (Artist frowns again, I suspect pondering other possible reasons why Richard Hammond could have a Ford Focus)

I wonder what Richard Hammond does on a daily basis when he’s not driving cars on TV? I know what his wife gets up to she’s got a column in the Daily Express. I read a couple of articles, one was about the wonderment and chaos that ensued one night when her dog brought a live hedgehog into his kennel. She put the hedgehog carefully back in the hedge and they all lived happily ever after. The other article was about the pains of trying to decide what theme to have for her 50th Birthday party, I know 50!! She’s looking good on it, she’s very active and gets lots of fresh air. Anyway the theme also meant fancy dress and she had about 5 different ideas at different times leading up to the event. She made 5 different invitations for each idea and then went on holiday to Cyprus where she had a change of mind, asked for Richard’s thoughts and reading between the lines it sounds like Richard just wanted a theme which would involve the ladies wearing very little. I think they decided on Hollywood Glamour. We did get an invite you know, it was for the pirate themed idea though and I had already bought the outfits, I suppose pirates would have been fine for a Hollywood theme but I didn’t want to be ridiculed, Jeremy Clarkson can be a complete bastard!! I kind of like him for it though in a weird way” (Artist looking sad, I’m guessing having learnt that he had missed out on yet another celebrity party, together with the opportunity of being able to dress up as a pirate again)

He stops me ranting any further with

“Ok so what about a day in the life of though, an article about us, day to day, what people have been asking for?” (Artist getting impatient)

“Ian I just don’t know, an average day involves you stood with your back to me at the easel being a creative genius, you drink loads of coffee and eat cake. I sit in the opposite corner writing lists, answering emails/phone calls,
ordering stock, doing sums, framing pictures, packaging orders and putting them in piles by the front door for the Interlink guy. I’m probably responsible for logistics too if I completely understood what that meant.
If it means all of the organising and all of the packing for the shows and then telling you how to get there then yeah I do logistics. Do you know that every time we leave for a show once I’ve sorted and packed everything and you have hooked up the caravan, we get to the end of the drive and you always ask left or right?”

“Yeah I do that on purpose, for effect, its funny”

“Oh ok, so you know where you’re going then?”

“No not always”

“Not even if we’ve been there a million times before?”

“Sometimes but mostly no, things change, roads move around and stuff”

“So Ian is it enough that I write just about you always being stood at the easel, working to deadlines but with regular cake and coffee breaks, and that we go to bed mostly around 3am?”

“What time is it?” (Artist getting tired)

“Nearly half past two”

“Ok that’ll be fine, I think you’ve said enough.” ….. Artist giving up and sending me to bed whilst humming ‘Stand by your Man’