I've kind of skirted around the issue of my elder brother Simon (I have another bro too also older but that's not important right now) maybe it's time I confronted it.

OK here's the thing: dysfunctional family dynamic; .....................................................................

................anyway: Simon 9 years older, into art, approved of, I want approval too, I also get into art, struggle to find own identity, fight against art, art great excuse for not doing other stuff...........

I touched on some of this in the 203 logbook...............

.............anyway, I get to art school, first day in the life class I have a "what the f**k am I doing here" feeling, I couldn't do life drawing to save my life. My first success was a pair of Art Deco stylie book ends I made out of orange and blue Perspex from a damaged shop sign. It was a workshop project in which we had to make something using some of the workshop equipment (I mostly used the band saw and a circle cutting jig). In the group crit it was picked out for particular attention and I thought, "hello I like this feeling, I want more of it."

Not in itself a bad thing but when you feel that what is being approved of is predicated upon being like someone else and not like yourself, it kind of takes the gilt off the gingerbread.

Getting into Saint Martin's became the Holy Grail. Simon had done his degree at Stourbridge college of Art, he'd gone from Adrian Hill's "paint in a day landscapes" to Clement Greenburg in a rapid space of time. I was lucky and had his head start. Simon did the advanced painting course at Saint Martins and was still well remembered and was working on Artscribe and writing for the Evening News. I used to tell people that I was Simon's brother within about 30 seconds of meeting them, especially if they were at all important in the art world.

That was how I defined myself: Simon's brother. It's taken until about 5 or 6 years ago to really get past that. The wildlife thing helped, as did the photography. The point is that intellectually I know that I am a highly capable and creative person in my own right but it really took starting this course to finally make me believe it emotionally. Wildlife photography was really the first thing I managed to do with out any of that baggage. (that's not actually true, my time at ARTTS was, but that didn't lead anywhere, career wise, in the end).

So then we start looking at art in unit 103 and I find myself, initially just because I had the knowledge, responding and getting interested in the idea of art again. It feels dangerous, reading Blimey felt very dangerous. It's like I'm trying to work out again what would get Simon's approval (Matt being only one remove from him). Even the collecting of natural objects feels dodgy when I know that Simon, after years of not doing any art himself, is now making things involving, in part, natural objects. See Simon Vaughan Winter Constructions (external link)

But is it surprising that we think alike in some ways? Should I reject something just because it is a bit like something Simon might do?

I'm not really in touch with Simon at the moment.

So I'm aware of the danger, on the other hand I do feel securer in myself than I have ever done, and that perhaps it is now safe to reclaim (annex) some of my past, because all the time I might have been doing stuff for the wrong reasons some of the good parts of it must have rubbed off too and having taken a break from the idea of art or being an artist I come back to it with an entirely new perspective.

I reckon I could be a wildlife photographer in the Andy Rouse, Laurie Campbell mould, that is high quality, relatively straight forward, illustrative realism; I know I have the photographic and creative skills, whether I have the selling skills is more open to question. At one time I might have been perfectly happy with that (still might be) it has an honesty about it which appeals to me, you can tell straight away if an image works, it needs no explanation, it fulfils a real function in the real (economic) world. But then I'm interested in all this other stuff.....