I was asked by gallerist Benoit at le Lavo//matik in Paris, if I could revisit a subject that I briefly mentioned to him years ago. We both share a youth that was driven by the excitement of our respective punk scenes and the conversation started firing up old memories and one particularly relevant moment for me. It suddenly occurred to me that my first showing of oil paintings in a public venue was back in the early 1980s on the shop walls of a friend in Bath who was selling punk shoes, boots and clothes. I don’t know if the idea was mine or hers, but the paintings were on the walls in a little place called Bart’s Bazaar alongside the gear she was selling. They were portraits of friends that were happy to be painted nude, provided I made clear focus on their upstanding punk credentials – hair and extreme make-up. I also took the paintings to one of my failed art college application interviews, they obviously weren’t impressed! I don’t have the paintings anymore; this was the early 80s. But the important thing to remember is that this was the first time my work was publicly shown, and as the galleries in the town usually flipped the ‘closed’ sign whenever I approached clutching an art folder, this was the only way to get it shown. It’s that punk DIY attitude. Don’t give up when the established route is shut off to you, just do it yourself with mates and a slightly diverted direction … So a shout out and a thank you to Linda at Bart’s Bazaar and later Lucrezia Borgia… the finest punk clothes in town back in the day. It’s these small acts of support that keep artists going. And here I am, revisiting the idea of punk portraits more than forty years on.

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