Lewes exhibition

David Taylor from Seaford offers the latest exhibition at Lewes’ Star Brewery Gallery (August 7-16; Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-4pm; Sunday, 11am-3pm; closed Monday).

David admitted: “I have a feeling whenever I call myself a painter or artist, I am being precocious, as if I am different or special, but as Grayson Perry once said ‘Art is switching a light on and switching a light off.’

“Maybe I am switching a light on in my own dark room? Or is it as simple as ‘I draw and paint. Therefore I am.’ But it is through adversity and time with the desire to draw and paint to express myself.”

As for the latest exhibition: “I drive through the Gates of Hindover (or High and Over) almost every day to visit my wife, who is a resident at a nursing home in Alfriston.

“With the loss of her freedom, I found the Cuckmere Valley has the air of eternity. It will always be the same. Do I hear the calls of youth? No, it is a cradle of civilisation, safe and snug, as we really want to live.

“I commenced work at the age of 15 in 1949. On a Monday morning at 8am I became a silk screen printer on glass and worked in London. By 1953 I was called up as many men were, for National Service – the army. They chose Royal Army Medical Corps, maybe because I was too small to drive a tank? I was posted to Germany that year.

“There were very few art galleries around, mostly bombed buildings from the Second World War, with people living in the basements. As reality kicked in, I was seeing people who had made us, as children, hide in shelters during bombing raids, now living in shelters themselves.

“Perhaps that is why I am attracted to drawing ruins – castles, huts, anything that is a ruin, even people.

“After two years I was demobbed, free back in London, age 21. I was unemployed for the next five years or so. I became a 'hippy', a 'beatnik', a 'layabout'; whatever society wanted to label me. In those happy days, one could walk into any art school and join a class or jump onstage in a show called Hair and dance freely. Happy days.

“By 1960 I had grown up and took employment with the National Gallery in London, and no, not as a curator or picture conservator, but as an attendant, looking after all the nation's pictures. Most of the other attendants were also Second World War ex-servicemen.

“I could look at the paintings all day and be paid for it. Now that is what I call an education.

“By this time, I was living in London, married with a child. After two years I was transferred to The Victoria and Albert Museum. I had become a fully paid civil servant. I visited most other museums and libraries in the country setting up exhibitions; yet again another education.

“Three years later I transferred to another museum in Greenwich, The National Maritime Museum, where I remained for the next 30 years, retiring in 1991 – another education. I now live in Seaford and have done for the past 40 years with my wife, now in a nursing home.

“I have exhibited at the Star Brewery Gallery. I find the simple four walls the right place to make a statement. There are no pots of honey or lucky heather, just four walls and pictures to hang. I think I can say I am self-taught. Too late to change at 91 years of age.”