Chapter 10: First artist studio

Even though to some it might seem like a big change leaving London and moving 270 miles north, it didn’t feel that strange to me in a way, as I’d already been visiting the North East for seven years. Finally living here though, it felt good, a calmer more relaxing pace of life was what I hoped for. Leading up to this move, I’d had a summer break to see my folks in France. During that break, I produced a couple of new paintings - both using found photographic references. There was a floating figure of a female surfer, which I discovered on the Instagram account of Ming Nomchong. And then another project was using a photograph taken by one of my old colleagues at BBC - Martha. She spent a lot of time in Chamonix, France and whilst looking at her Flickr account one day, I saw a great photo of a wild Ibex that I liked. With both of these photos, I was careful to get permission first that each person was happy for me to create a painting from their respective photos.

Floating girl (left) and Ibex at Chamonix (right)

So arriving in September 2014, I started renting a terraced house with my girlfriend in her home village, which we’d managed to organise through a family friend, so we had a decent flexible arrangement. In the meantime we could start to properly search for our own place to buy. I’d managed to save up a small deposit for a first house.

We looked all over in different areas, but mostly our focus was around Newcastle - as I had already secured a job at a small digital design agency in the city, so needed to be able to commute in. I had a couple weeks or so before starting the job, so we used the time just to settle into our new rented place.

This new job was at a digital marketing & design agency called Status. I was going in as their Head of UX - a grand title (I thought), but it gave me a good opportunity to install some best practices in user experience into a new design & development team that hadn’t had this function before. Work-wise, clients ranged from private international school group websites, NHS, L’Oreal, student letting agents and local car retail clients. Status also had it’s own in-house projects in development for fitness class booking.

They were a nice bunch of people to work with, and we all got on well. Spotify Friday playlists & bacon sandwiches became traditions, along with Thursday pizza by the slice at Grainger Market, followed by cakes from Pet Lamb Patisserie! (If you ever visit Newcastle you have to go check these out!)

Outside work I began to explore the local area - and I soon discovered Ouseburn - the trendy east end full of creatives, artists, bars/cafes and live music. I picked up a flyer one day for Ouseburn Open Studios - and made my way along to their weekend open day around the artist studios. I’d been to some similar events in Cambridge and Putney before, but this was nice to see happening locally and drew in a lot of people, it’s gone from strength to strength each year.

From early on, seeing this thriving community of artists, I contacted some studio landlords and made enquiries about studio spaces. I viewed a couple of places - but the only rooms available were damp, dark and didn’t particularly inspire me.

It was six months later in April 2015, when my girlfriend and I found a place to buy that we liked. It had taken many viewings across different locations, but we eventually settled on Whickham - a nice village in Gateshead. It’s a shame in a way, as we’d literally signed to accept the house, and then one day at work I got a call from a Channel 4 research/media team - asking if we’d consider being on Location Location Location! Early on, we’d submitted a form online, mainly as a joke, not expecting to be selected. But they said they’d liked our story of me moving up north after such a long time, and my girlfriend being an identical twin - so part of our search criteria involved being close to her sister, but also her sister liking where we lived too!

I remembered what my old boss at BBC was saying when I left, and then seeing an advert somewhere for an open day, I headed over to see what was happening in the Newcastle Government digital hub - which was home to HMRC and DWP. I can’t honestly say I’d have guessed I’d be working at HMRC, but after visiting and understanding what they were doing there - it was a good fit with the type of digital work I’d been doing previously in London. And so after one year up north, I decided to return to freelance work - and started at HMRC in September 2015.

Working on such complicated public services, our job was to find a way to make it as simple and easy to use as possible. It was very functional, like solving a puzzle, re-arranging all the pieces to make sense. Government digital work meant following an established design system, which I had a lot of respect for, but it also meant almost no visual creativity was required. I needed an outlet for my visual work - and so I began sketching, drawing and painting more often.

In early summer 2016, we had some tough family news – my mum, who had been unwell on & off leading up to her 60th birthday, was formally diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and started treatment. We stayed as positive as we could throughout, always believing she would get through it. My folks relocated back to the UK, as they wanted treatment to take place in England, plus the family could be together more often. She began a new trial chemotherapy treatment course in Cambridge. It was a long gruelling process, so I was travelling up and down the country regularly. The next 18 months would be an emotional rollercoaster…

Brighton Road, Gateshead, 1901 (left) and Brighton Road Studios, 2018 (right)

It was at this point when I began to think what I’d call myself if I was an artist. I didn’t want to use my real name, as I’d always be clashing with a certain pukka celebrity TV chef. My dad had done lots of research into our family tree, and seeing a distant relative on here is where I got the name William Fawkes.

I think the news of my mum’s illness gave me the push I needed to go for it, and take on an artist studio. Plus I’d also reduced my working days at HMRC down to four days a week, which gave me a dedicated art day. I was lucky I could do this, and felt really fortunate. But sometimes I also found I was using the extra time around the weekend to head down and see my mum too.

One day I got a tip from a friend that there was a set of artist studios in Gateshead - so I went to take a look and this is how I landed my first studio - no.3 at Brighton Road Studios, on 1st September 2016. The building was a conversion of a former church in Bensham. We each had a clean functional unit with white walls, internet and strip lights hanging above - however the only downfall of this first studio was it had quite poor natural light, as it was the only empty space currently, and set at the back of the building which was built into a hill.

St Mary’s Church, Welwyn (left), The Wellington pub, Welwyn (middle) and early identity ink drawings for William Fawkes (right)

My friend Helen was already working in the arts, and running a gallery in Oxford. She gave me lots of useful advice on establishing myself as an artist, giving me the confidence to actually go for it and get my own studio. She actually suggested early on that she liked my black & white work - and so the first bunch of self-initiated projects were all black & white paintings. I was continuing with found source photography to create something new - I’d been doing this for years casually - but now I wanted to focus on something I was personally interested in from living in the North East. This was working men’s clubs. I don’t know what it was, but I found them interesting places, and had visited a couple with my girlfriend’s dad. I got hold of some old photos, and started to create some scenes from inside. This is what lead to the creation of two of my earliest paintings: Conversation at the club and Skeletons at the club - the latter being almost a random accident one day.

Conversation at the club - early composition sketching (left) and the finished artwork (right)

I was busy painting away, and midway through painting the bar scene, I thought hang on… I don’t want to copy this photo straight into a painting - it felt unimaginative. I often combine many different elements of photos into a single composition - this started way back when doing A-level art. But with this particular scene - I liked the original photo - but didn’t want to copy it all - so I thought about why I was so interested in this scene - what was my message? I guess it was about the fragile nature of these institutions being under threat from closure by larger pub chains, and for previous generations they had been a sanctuary. So I thought ok, what if they figures were ghosts, or skeletons to symbolise they could be dying out? That’s how that painting came into existence. I used different photos of skulls from various angles to try to find ones which would fit the angles of the figures of the photos.

Skeletons at the club - early composition sketching (left), starting to fill detail (middle) and the finished artwork (right)

In late November 2016, I asked if I could somehow be involved in Ouseburn’s Open Studios - despite being a Gateshead artist, our landlord also ran Mushroom Works in Ouseburn, so I was able to put a print rack of quickly assembled prints of work together along a corridor, and just try it out and see what people liked. To be fair, with low production costs, and a few 20x20cm framed prints on the wall, I didn’t do too bad for a first attempt. It was nice to speak to people and see what kinds of works people liked. It was a good learning experience.

During my visits to see my mum, I’d often stay there and take up some sketching, I also got into pen & ink drawings - and did a few of local buildings in the village my mum & dad were living at the time. My mum also took up some art, she dabbled with a few painting projects - including two studies of small boats by large lakes.

Canoe & fishing boats by the lake, paintings by my mum, Cora

My mum’s chemotherapy course was coming to an end, and the decision was made that the tumour had shrunken enough to operate. It was a highly risky and complex operation, known as the whipple procedure, but with the added dynamic that the surgeon was going to insert a new artificial blood vessel that would need to replace a major vessel caught up around the tumour. It was an extremely stressful and anxious time, and the operation lasted much longer than planned, however after a long wait, he had the call that she was finally in intensive care recovery and the procedure had gone as planned. The surgeon saw us straight after and said how it had been touch-and-go, as the body initially had rejected the new vessel, and she’d lost a lot of blood, but then eventually it started to work. He explained it was still a dangerous time, as complications could still arise and the mortality rate was very high.

Once my mum came to, we eventually got to see her, and it was a very happy moment, knowing she was so tough and had got through this extreme operation in one piece - the first of its kind ever attempted. It was such a surreal feeling after all the trauma, sickness and worry that she’d got through it and was now technically cured.

Sadly only a few weeks into her being home, and during a routine post check-up, scans showed that something had returned. There were early indications of cancerous cells around the liver. All operations like this risk the chance that a few rogue cancer cells could escape undetected, and that’s what must have happened. But again we all picked ourselves up and remained positive.

There was an option to begin chemotherapy straight away, but my mum wasn’t sure she could handle going through it all again so soon. We had a few months break from it - and took the opportunity to do some nice things together. We had some amazing family trips to Iceland in July (my youngest brother Josh was already staying over there on an arts residency).

Iceland, July 2017 - taken with a low-fi disposable camera

In late August 2017 my mum travelled with my dad over to Florida for a work trip he had. After a few fairly calm days, including evenings watching nesting turtles swimming up to the beach & laying their eggs, the news started ramping up with warnings of a dangerous storm approaching - hurricane Irma. It became more and more bleak, with the storm being categorised as category 5 - the strongest ever seen, and evacuation was encouraged. I had been due to travel out with my youngest brother, but the departure day came and with the news and evacuations in full swing we decided not to fly, and at the same time - my parents were trying to find a way to get out of there. It was incredibly stressful, but they eventually got a flight out and were back home safely. This is the inspiration behind one of my paintings - Space Walker, depicting two figures on a perilous edge above the earth, with a hurricane seen below them.

We also then had another last minute trip away to Crete in September, which was still in a heatwave so we had amazing weather there throughout our two-week trip. After an eventful summer, my mum decided she didn’t want to go through the chemotherapy again, so we just did as much together as possible as a family, and even got through another Christmas. We finally lost her on a cold snowy morning, on the 31st January 2018.

My mum through the ages - as a child, in the early 60s (left), just after I was born - in the early 80s (middle), and in 2017 (right)