DavidSeedFineArt

I'm an artist/craftsman living and working in Gloucester in the UK. I went to art school thirty odd years ago, but at the time I never did any painting.

After foundation, where I mainly did photography, print making, and ceramics, I got myself onto a contemporary crafts course. I specialised in metalwork (blacksmithing and non-ferrous metal smithing) although I also worked in ceramics, textiles and wood. On graduating, my first jobs were furniture factory assembly work interspersed with periods of unemployment, then display and exhibition work.

I talked my way into as many life-classes as I could for a couple of years and drew all the time. I then started volunteering at a local community arts project which eventually led to a career in social care.

It was a great job for a long long time, and for a number of years I also taught life classes.

I qualified as a social worker, but as I got into social-care management, I no longer did much in the way of drawing or sculpting, although I did a lot in the way of restoring our old house, and creating a garden. Apart from a few stabs at painting in the nineties, I didn’t really put brush to canvas at all until 2012.

Eventually I resigned from my job and went self-employed. Almost straight away I started painting and drawing again. I really wanted to get back to the way I felt about art that I had done as a kid, where I just enjoyed it for its own sake and hadn’t worried about whether or not it was contemporary or fashionable.

Four years down the line, I now make my bread and butter living doing bespoke carpentry and paint on a regular basis in my studio. When not doing this, I build musical instruments and bread ovens, write and play the ukulele (badly).