In 1993 I was eleven. Sitting in class one day I drew a black and white cartoon strip about an environmentally friendly earthworm. It went into the Earthworm Cartoon Quiz, a national competition run by Friends of the Earth. Raymond Briggs and Quentin Blake were two of the judges. The Quentin Blake.
My earthworm was picked from over 2,000 entries. One of ten winners in the country. I won fifty green books, my school got a £150 stationery voucher, and the Marlborough Times took a photo. My mum told the paper: “He has always had a love of drawing and has a great interest in cartoons. I hope it is a talent which can be fostered and he can make good use of it when he gets older.”
Thirty three years later I opened a gallery. So I wrote to Quentin Blake and sent him the old newspaper cutting.
This week his office wrote back. Quentin dictated the reply himself. He can’t come to the opening, he doesn’t do events these days. But he sent a line for the wall.
“What you have to do is to just start drawing, even if you think perhaps that you don’t do it well. You probably are doing something of interest. Start to draw and find out what happens. And, I will mention this in the hope that it may be of some encouragement, I have no professional qualifications at all!”
Quentin Blake. Britain’s best loved illustrator. No professional qualifications at all.
That is the whole idea of this place, in one sentence. Nobody needs permission to be an artist.
His words go on the wall on 15 August. Come and read them in person. Free tickets at studiobrut.art/rsvp.
Bye for now,
SLART