The tail wagging the dog

      Recently in the news it was reported that doctors are being advised to be careful in prescribing Benzodiazepine tranquillisers. 'Diazepam' and 'Lorazepam'  

come from this family of drugs.  I didn't get as far as reading who is advising them but all I know is my dear late sister Veronica Jill was addicted to a prescription drug called 'Ativan'  over a twenty five year period and one readily prescribed to me for a few years. She tried in her own way to raise public awareness by appearing on a daytime television programme that highlighted this  toxic family of drugs and their dangers were known decades ago.

      Anyone suffering severe depression will likely have associated anxiety, a terrible 'no hiding place' affliction and this kind of treatment is basically a sledge hammer to the senses with longterm effects on the nervous system and arguably now an impact on Dementia, I nearly forgot to say. During a hospital stay - my closest encounter of hell on this earth (my state of mind, not the hospital), I was given hefty does of 'Diazepam' and probably one of the greatest acts of will and determination in my life was to throw them down the lavatory pan and face my demons in full consciousness when I was discharged. I was even offered money on the street for my prescribed drugs.  

      To this day I refuse to take medication and this  includes alcohol in large doses. When things get really bad it is a glass of cider or red wine as there is no doubt drugs affect the mind. But I would be ignorant to wrong say drugs are wrong for managing all mental conditions and I suspect as with everything else rthere is a payoff called side effect. The term 'side effect' has a similar ring to 'clean' energy when talking nuclear. In an ideal world we would need no doctors but at least we should have the trust that their judgment is sound. 

     I lost my mother Jean in childbirth due to medical neglect. She shouldn't have died. She died bleeding of an internal hemorrhage and there was no care present. It was a tragedy that should not have happened. In my youth my father mistakingly overdosed on insulin as he was diabetic and in his coma was pumped full of more insulin by a freshman doctor in hospital. 

      As a young man trying to deal with the socially tabooed condition of depression I had a rare doctor who happened to be elderly and a Christian. He would book me in for his last surgery of the day so he could give me a little extra time and the biggest therapy was having someone genuinely caring to listen to me. Financial worries were part of the depression and he knew I was a furniture maker struggling to make a living with no outlets for my avant grade designs. He suggested an empty shop window I might approach a local businessman about and I took on that shopwindow at a rent of £3 a week on the busy A4 road. I called my shopwindow 'The Bath Carpenter' and my unusual furniture got a wide audience due to traffic jams right by it. Thanks to my doctor. That was in 1977 but the doctor of today in the society of today paints a very different picture. Heaven only knows what will happen when doctors have control of the purse strings. 

      

My Aunt Wilhemina Barns-Graham

      My aunt Wilhelmina or 'Willie' to family and friends was a celebrated British painter and member of the St Ives School who's centenary was 2012. She died in 2004. Few people had heard of her outside the inner art sanctum (certainly in my youth when I mentioned her to artist friends) and although her CV included major galleries around the world, she received public recognition (The CBE) much later on in her twilight years. 

     Willie was the sister of my mother Jean who died having me. We were virtually the only practising creatives in the wide family apart from my late half-sister Barbara.  In her work I recognised the importance of technique and how learning the rules gives one true freedom to break away. Her early water colours were a fantastic expression of mastery of technique and indeed technique was instrumental in much of her abstract work such as using paper hole stiffeners as a collage in a particular phase in her work. 

      I am no art critic, although she once asked me my opinion about some of her last paintings and then she said 'you sound just like like the Sunday Times art critic who was down here last week'. The fact is anyone could see she was a fantastic artistic brimming with creative energy right up until shortly before her death and if any work of art truly evokes feeling then finding language to describe it is not rocket science. Perhaps equally importantly she was one of a small group of prominent women, such as Mary Goldring, who spoke on Radio Four about various topics. I recall her as a great story teller, just like my late sister Veronica Jill. 

    The point of this short comment here, is one of the apparent lottery of life and how, in misspelling her name in a letter of congratulation may possibly have cost me an inheritance to be an innovative furniture maker operating from a 'stately' home, instead of a tiny cramped basement workshop without natural light in an artisan terraced property!  Life is certainly a mystery in the cards that are dealt out:

  Willie amongst fellow painters in St Ives (circa 1947)

'Penniless artists' mentioned in the video is a generalised term based on the assumption that many artists lack the financial means to sustain their art and therefore a trust set up to help talented young people by way of offering scholarships is an entirely worthy cause.