What Makes You You? Each answer acts as an inspiration for me to create a unique digital image.

Blog Archives

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number 708
The biggest factor in my life I think that has made me who I am has been my lack of confidence in myself, stemmed from childhood of being abused no way a child ever should and re-enforced by my parents telling me to stay put of sight and unheard alone in my room because I was an embarrassment. This of course lent me to another to a world of imagination, drawing and painting, and be resourceful. I could escape in story. For years as an adult I held the belief that I am not good enough for a career or love or friend ship. Leading me to push others away, lie about myself and not try hard to achieve because I would just fail anyway. I still don’t like to be touched if I don’t trust the person. These days I have learnt how to talk to people more, I have been in a relationship for a number of years now. I have been building up practice in drawing and painting again. It was the thing I wanted to be doing but never could because of self doubt. I think most of all what makes me the person who I am is my imagination and my resourcefulness.
inspired by Anthony Osman

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number 707


The distant place,
Lofty and secure destiny—
Snow all year round —

Streams of meltwater,
Running past the mother’s feet,
There she bathed,
Cover me with afterbirth.

Cold springs,
Wrapped around me,
My cry,
Fall to,
Stone crevices at the bottom of mountain streams and deep pools.

On the swaddle of the world,
Embroidered with fire and camellia,
Hung with silver bells,
Twinkling like a star.

Can’t wrap up the night,
Listen,
It is the forbidden glare,
I use “Hello! Say goodbye.

A path with ferns,
Often collapsed，
Lust,
A pastoral hidden in the monsoon.

In its purest form,
Scattered by the soil in the wind,
However,
My shape remains the same,
I’m good for nothing.

As a result,
Cold soul,
Gradually plump in the forgotten.

inspired by Xi Guanlei

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number 706
I am a collection of material with ‘potential’.  My base substance is formed from parental genetic material plus any congenital anomalies. Thereafter, social and environmental conditions (experiences, events, things witnessed) become inscribed on my psyche and determine my behaviours/psychological rules for living. One is not conscious of what the developing mind sublimates – which raises the question, how far are thoughts and actions one’s own or the product of structural influences?  I feel that I am largely shaped by the temporal context, which can be unnerving because it’s difficult to describe who you are, but it does enables me to be responsive and to develop. I acknowledge that there is no deep identity truth that I have to identify with but rather an unbearable truth that I have to learn to live with:- the ‘big Other’, a void (it is explained differently by various philosophers, psychologists, theoreticians).  Ethel Adnan said, “Your identity is your prison”.  Being human (having a conscience) comes with consequences.
inspired by Anne Stansfield

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number 700
Each of us was born in the primeval soup, evolved and are linked to all the creatures and  tribes on earth and probably beyond. Yet we are all unique within that commonality. That is what I celebrate and wish to communicate that is what makes me, me.
inspired by Maz Jackson  

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number 694
What makes me/me is the culmination of my experiences with the world outside and the world inside. A constant flow of information, choices, decisions, feelings and human nature. The balancing of what I interact with that is outside of myself and how I react internally and also externally to that interaction.
inspired by Aillia Fuego  

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number 693
Going to art college allows you to talk yourself into things I find. So three decades later, I’ve been to business school studied marketing, economics and statistics and worked in data science but painting has kept me looking at the world. It has kept me in the present. It’s now time to get more balance in my life more painting and less working. I love ‘working’ putting my mind to things. 
I lost my sight through stress a couple of times, it all came back thankfully. The ophthalmologist said you can see colours most people can’t see, it’s rare. That’s a good reason to do more painting. 
I hope that will do, I’m a man of few words. You see my output not what I drone on about. 
inspired by Tim Waskett

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number 690
What makes me is my formative experiences, the sounds, sights and smells growing up close to Glasgow’s Govan shipyards in the 60s and 70s; the demolition of the tenements; the warmth and love of a matriarchal household, (my mother and grandmother) and attending from 11 years Saturday morning art classes at GSA.
inspired by Patricia Mackinnon-Day 

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number 689
Having grown up in the country, travelled the world. I took two art degrees. Now aside from designing and making the odd tool, my art is all about trees. I carve spoons, spatulas, crochet hooks and small bowls. All from British hardwoods.  I feel hedge laying is a form of 3-D sculpture as you tame a wild growth into a stock proof barrier aided by stakes and binders. 
inspired by Bob Thomas  

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number 686
My historical circumstances, childhood conditions, genetic inheritance — that’s about it. Same as anyone. If the question was, what do you want to do, mostly, the answer would be more revealing. I want to do what I like. But it’s an illusion and it leads to a form of imprisonment. You can only be “you” in relation to others. There’s a lot of limitations you have to acknowledge consciously. Otherwise you’re trapped in unconscious patterns that mean “you” is much less than it could be. What makes me “me” is whirling around doing this and that thinking it’s an escape from something I ought to be doing, and then gradually I really have to do it.
inspired by Matthew Collings

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number 685
What makes me /me is the way I perceive my surroundings as viewed from an ever changing and subjective center. The experience of belonging and at the same time feeling displace by this incredible city, where instability and change are my ground.  My paintings are the result of thoughts that evolve from that concept, and I am my thoughts.
inspired by Manel Lledós  

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number 683
There is no continuous self. The ego tricks us into the belief in ‘selfhood’. Everyone’s idea of who they are and who other people are is entirely generated by their own mind/consciousness. The true mystery is that when I point to myself I point towards my chest and my heart, but not my head and my brain. ‘I’ am located in your brain, your mind.
inspired by Simon Lee