Pamela Craven Davies

Writing about art and how it has influenced my life, I can go as far back as being age 9 and winning a competition at school for the best landscape watercolour painting of Malham Tarn whilst on a school field trip. I still have this painting as I found it whilst looking for information I needed to enrol onto this MA in Creative Media. Then at the age of 15 and leaving school with only 1 ‘O’ level in Art of course! I had to make a choice of career. Nobody knew what dyslexia was then but I had it and didn’t find out till 12 years later. Advantage or disadvantage irrelevant at this stage but I thought I was hiding something from everyone. I felt different and I didn’t fit in. In the careers centre back then! Being an August baby ! I was very young compared to everyone else already way past 16 most of them. “What do you want to do”? They said. “I want to be an artist”!😇 shock horror on the face!! No! Do you want to end up like Van Gogh penniless! Cutting off your ear and ending up in a mental institution”? Honestly if the careers advisor can remember saying this to me? What chance does a 15 year old have? Looking back I think it’s funny but it effected me and stopped me for a long time following the path I felt I could have. “Nurse or Secretary”? Well can you imagine my horror! I could hardly read or spell ! I thought I would end up giving the wrong medicine to the wrong person if I was a nurse, so I chose to be a secretary and went to secretarial college for 2 years! Not that bad really. I can type fast and my spelling did improve a bit. I did read about art and travelled the world looking at it and at the age of 25 I started a pottery course at a local college and for the first time a teacher took interest in my work and told me I could get into university with a portfolio like I had !! Good teachers and positive words can change lives and thankyou for them. I moved to London, worked to finance myself through a Access course at Lambeth College and then onto Roehampton Institute, University of Surrey for a degree in Art for Community. A course I thought sounded interesting as it gave me a chance to experience different media. Photography, drawing, ceramics and stained glass,