My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have been surrounded by artists and paintings throughout my life. My father Ted Dyer is an artist, and from a very early age I have spent time painting and drawing.
My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.
I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.
My father was a professional artist all his life who encouraged my path as an artist.
Two of my grandfathers had been artists, lifelong oil painters, so I was exposed to art very young. I've always been interested in it, although I never pursued it as a career or even as an avocation.
I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.
Everyone in my family has some kind of artistic tendency. My great grandmother was a jewelry designer, and her daughter was a ceramic tile muralist.
There are, of course, always painters whom I admire and find fascinating. I've often thought, 'Goodness, if I could paint like the Danish Golden Age painters, the early 19th century painters, the way they could paint a landscape - absolutely beautiful.'
Well, one always has an instinct to be a painter, and I've done quite a lot of painting at one time or another, though not with any public success.
My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.