TWEED PRICKS

Portrait of the young artist as a Tweed Prick
Oil on canvas, 600 x 800 mm.  2022 

I am not, never have been or ever will be a dedicated follower of fashion. The song by the Kinks said it all. That said, I have to admit I can still remember what I was wearing on the day I started at Dundee College of Art. This was because I was still a chrysalis, dressed mostly by my mum. I was wearing a striped shirt, narrow woolen tie, cardigan, sports jacket and fawn cavalry twill trousers. On my feet I wore suede Hush Puppy shoes. Under clothes consisted of string vest and pants. This was my choice as it was the type worn in 1953 on Mount Everest and I felt they had special, possibly mystical powers. This was perfectly normal in 1965 but art students weren't meant to be normal.

Looking round the college canteen my gaze fell on a corner occupied by a group of final year students. This was the age of minimalist skirts and coloured tights. The girls looked wonderfully long legged, elegant and for me, unapproachably mature. The guys dressed in paint spattered jeans and wooly jumpers, with the occasional ex-army leather jerkin. They were silent and contemplative, drawing deeply on cigarettes or stroking luxuriant beards which I could never hope to grow. These, I thought, were real artists. Everything that could be said had been said. It was obvious that they were thinking deep thoughts.

On that first day I felt I was dressed like an office worker and as a new boy stood out like a sore thumb. Instead of transforming into a colourful butterfly, which was the way male fashion was going at the time, it was necessary to metamorphose into a drab moth. Jeans were essential and wooly, polo neck jumpers, easily obtainable from workwear and army surplus shops. Of course, I kept wearing the string vest. On top of this ensemble, I threw an old U.S. Marines parka of Korean war vintage. It only took a few weeks to transform from a raw schoolboy to a seemingly confident art student. All the jeans needed was a suitable application of randomly spattered daubs of paint.

I was happy like this for a year or so, but at the start of the new autumn term my sartorial complacency was given a rude shock. Into the studio strode my friend, John Kirkwood. He was resplendent in several yards of brown, tweed suite. He had been working over the holidays and invested in some clothes.

"Wow! The suite looks fantastic. Where did you get it?"

"It was in the sale at Jaegers on Princess Street. It wasn't too expensive."

I have to admit I coveted this suite. However, as it would be nearly a year before I could earn any money again, I had to practice delayed gratification, a form of virtuous behavior now out of fashion.

The young artist as a plumber's mate

Oil on board, 458mm x 610mm.  2022

The year passed and the summer came round again. I found a job at Burntisland shipyard as a plumber's mate (see Shipyard, the story of a painting, Sept 2020) and after a couple of months had saved enough to buy a suite. I took the bus to Kirkcaldy High Street which had several gents' tailors such as John Colliers and Hepworth's. There I flipped through book after book of materials while thin, white- faced men scurried around with tape measures. Clearly, asking for a tweed suite was considered extremely eccentric for Kirkcaldy and they had few samples. I found a grey, herring bone Harris Tweed and finally settled for that. They checked my measurements three times because they knew the tailors wouldn't believe the size of me. After this unpleasant humiliation I was quite happy to wait a few weeks while it was being constructed.

I loved that suite. I could wear it to any function with shirt and tie or casually with a polo neck.  By this time, I'd decided the only place for paint was on the canvas, so wore a boiler suite over the suite to keep it clean when painting. I wore it to my graduation from Dundee, my post-graduation and also for an interview in London for the Royal College of Art. It must have done the trick, for I was accepted.

A suitable accompaniment to tweed is a pair of strong, tan brogues. I knew from childhood that leather soles were slippery and wore out quickly. My father had a set of cobblers lasts in the garden shed so I hammered in heel and toe plates then covered the soles with steel studs. This gave me a good grip, but I sounded like the Brigade of Guards marching down the street.

One day I left the college in Kensington and jumped on a number 49 bus, which took me to Clapham Junction. As usual, I was sitting on the top deck. When the bus approached my stop, I jumped up and clattered down the stairs. Unfortunately, the steel studs slipped on the steel stairs and I came down violently on my backside, striking the sharp edge of the tread. This was a sair one and brought tears to my eyes. I could hardly walk across the Common to the flat. I thought I had broken my coccyx and it took months to clear up. To prevent this happening again I pulled the studs off the soles and took the shoes to a cobbler to fit rubber, stick on soles.

Not long after this I was walking down a corridor in the painting school of the college and noticed a couple of lads hanging about. They seemed slightly younger than me and I didn't recognize them as fellow students. As I approached, they were watching me with sly, insolent grins on their faces. As I passed. I couldn't help hear one of them say,

"Yeh! That's what this place is like. It's full of tweed pricks."

"Yeh, Tweed pricks."

I was well passed them but paused for a second as the red mist of rage boiled up in me. 

"I'll throw the little shites down the stairs. Bastards!"

I was fuming but held my temper, though only just.

I went home and thought about this for weeks. It had got to me. I was even angry about being angry over such a trivial thing. I was sickened by the whole episode and had no desire to wear the suite again. After all, I was living in London and maybe it was time for a change of image. One evening I took the suite off its hanger, bundled it up and threw it in the bin.

Art Students
Offset drawing and watercolour on paper,
 2022