Someone I Once Knew

I did not have a particularly happy childhood, my father was a womanizing bastard who could not handle the responsibility of life in civvy street with a wife and twin boys and abandoned us after a few years. Mum brought us back to her family in Hull but found it very difficult coping with the stigma of being a single parent and had a nervous breakdown. My brother and I went to stay with aunt Sally (Newland Sailors Home) for a year or two until Mum "got on her feet again". Mum remarried her childhood sweetheart Joe (whom she had left heartbroken a few years earlier to follow her ambition to join the Royal Navy. Although at first they kept in touch, they were many miles apart and life inevitably moved on for both of them. Mum fell in love with John Nicholas (a dashing Navy Lieutenant) while serving in Singapore and my twin brother (Mike) and I were the result).

Much of this can be found in Mums book "Out of the Chrysalis". Anyway to cut a long story short, Joe Shepherd had a deep rooted resentment of my brother and I that stemmed back from this period. He was a control freak and an Alcoholic and although there are happy memories from that time, they are sadly sullied by his treatment of Mum and ourselves over time.

Mum fell pregnant with twins again but there were complications and sadly Gary John was still born although Caroline survived. A year or so later Gary was born and then Dianne and my younger brother David.
Dad used to work for Hull Corporation Telephones (as it was then known). Before that he was a fireman on the railways. He could not cope with change and was a very heavy "social drinker".

For my part I was quite clever and passed my 11 plus examinations and as time went on, as the oldest I was pushed to achieve academically (my brother Mike was a very sickly child). I felt under a great deal of pressure to achieve but I was hormonal and still a virgin at 15 yrs old and ran away from home and the situation (to loose my virginity in a workman's hut at the side of the road leading out of the town instead of sitting for my GCEs). For a time I did not look back as I was afraid to face the consequence of my behavior but later discovered that i did not really know the girl I had run away with and I was appalled to discover that she was stealing from people that were good enough to take us in. We had a massive argument about this and she climbed into a truck drivers cab and left me standing at the side of the road. I returned home.

Dad refused to allow me back into the house unless I "took the cure" for drugs and signed myself into De La Pole hospital (the local house on the hill) and proved to him that I was drug free (this was 1970 and he was paranoid that drugs were taking over the world and would through me, be the ruination of his family) but for my part I had only tried a joint or two as no-one would give us anything as we were so young.
My relationship with my Dad deteriorated massively from that point on as I felt that if I had to accept "the cure" for something I had very little experience of then I was damned sure that I was going to find out about it in my own way. Dad did everything he could to stop me of course, by plying my brother with alcohol to loosen his tongue to find out where I was and what I was up to and informing the local drug squad of any developments, but nothing would deter me. De La Pole became the soft option to prison and any publicity was better then no publicity as far as I was concerned.
This whole situation spiraled uncontrollably until at 19 yrs old I was a complete and utter mess after taking and mixing just about anything I could get my hands on, on a daily basis over the period. One day I did not take anything but felt myself tripping and I just did not come down. two days later I was rushed into De La Pole Hospital after being followed by alien spaceships to my girlfriends home, I though I was being abducted by aliens after spending much of the previous night talking to the ghosts of Adolf Hitler and Jimi Hendrix.
The doctors assessed that the only course of treatment was eight sessions of ECT which left me cabbaged for a considerable period of time, however I was determined to remember what had happened to me and I once again embarked on a drug fuelled mission of self obsession.

I was also of course caught up in the time of the British Woodstock, Bickershaw Festival, a plethora of our favorite West Coast Musicians that happened in 1972 and which was the total experience. A windswept thunderstorm in a sea of mud and in the presence of the legendary Dr John aka the Night Tripper and then later Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band at 4.00 in the morning was ,for me both phenomenal and unforgettable.

Later the next day as the psychotropic haze wore off we were treated to the Greatful Dead who proved that discomfort is mind over matter.

Prince Street Mosaic.

I created "Prince Street Mosaic" from materials left over from the creation of "River Mosaic" in 1983. The piece itself is "quite cumbersome" as it is a layer of vinyl tile on sheet steel mounted on a crude wooden frame. I seem to remember that it was "heritage year" or there abouts and I felt both of these images to be part of Hulls heritage, my approach to the "mosaic work" however was not conventional.

for further information visit www.thepainterscollection.com "the home of quality reproduction"

Community Routes continued...

As you probably appreciate my area model did indeed grow exponentially as I recognised the route that my virtual camera would need to travel in order to carry on creating this series of animations from it. I began to regard my model as having some sort of historical context as I had created it as accurately as my methods allowed and during the course of modelling changes were inevitably happening to my real world subject, new buildings, one way systems which of course I had to reflect. however I found myself "out on a limb" in creating it and failed to gain any real interest for the idea from the organisations portrayed as they are all community charities existing through funding that was always restrictive. I carried on regardless, of course, consumed with creative passion.

Links to organisations shown in these animations are Unity in Community and Greenwood Housing, North Hull Community Centre.

Community Routes

As my computer model of the area where I lived grew, I started to consider uses for it outside of purely creating "animation for animations sake". I decided that I could utilise my model to illustrate the routes between the various community organisations that where spread across the area as I considered that people in general may not necessarily know where they are or what services each had to offer. The result is a series of "fly through" animations that I entitled "Community Routes".

Links to Organisations portrayed in these animations are Unity in Community, Endike Methodist Church, and Endike Community Care Association (ECCA).

"A Ride in the Park" 2008.

I came across this old unmarked photograph one day that struck me as decidedly "odd" to modern sensibilities and definitely would not be considered "allowable" by today's standards.

I decided that I would attempt to paint a coloured version of it that for me held a very symbolic and separate "message" as the wheel of life, with the Ostrich as a symbol of flight and the children "nested" in the cart about to "flee the nest" metaphorically speaking. As they say, "every picture tells a story" which sometimes when translated into symbolism can be quite interesting also.

two carts

"Two Wagons" is a small 35 second animation I created in 2004. At the time I was interested in attempting to create a computer project that looked at the history of an area to show how an area had grown and developed over time. It may look odd setting historical figures in a modern setting but I did not want to jeopardise any funding that may have been forthcoming at the time by being seen to be already working on the proposed project.

I had wanted to prove to myself that I could animate a horse walking, which proved to be far harder then I had at first imagined. Luckily help was at hand through the work of Eadweard Moybridge the eminent pioneering Edwardian photographer who had published a series of photographs of horse movements in order to win a wager that when running a horse always had one "hoof" in contact with the ground.

Deliah MacNamara of Imagine Dpm

I have just completed a three day course "Promoting your Business on the Internet" which was run by the wonderful Deliah MacNamara of "Imagine Dpm" and was, conveniently, just down the road from my home at the "City Learning Centre" on Hopewell Road, here in East Hull.

Deliah's course was sublime and helped us all to be more comfortable within a virtual environment. The learning was straight forward and simple and Deliah herself was very warm, friendly and approachable.

Our group was very small and quickly warmed to both the course and to one another. There was "Ralph" who has a vast experience of the Construction Industry, and "Martin" a Teacher and member of the local "Green Party". There was also "Big Bad Bill" who's off to Brazil shortly on a mission to teach as many Brazilians as possible to speak En

glish, and Bill's daughter "Jayne" whom I have to thank for the photographs in this article. And last but by no means least "Nick" who has shown us all that it is possible to chase your dreams to find your "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone with any trepidation of the web or of the benefits that can be brought to your business through it should immediately talk to "Deliah MacNamara" and book themselves onto one of the many and varied courses on offer with "Imagine Dpm"

Reality Bytes

I created "Reality Bytes" in 2004 although the computer modelling was started some 3 years prior to this video.
I was not altogether happy with the background music that I had created for this piece as it was a bit "rushed". I have subsequently remixed another soundtrack for it which I hope you will enjoy.

Hi my name is Stephen Shepherd and I am a multi media artist based in Hull, East Yorkshire. In 2007 I set up "the painter's collection dot com", to enable me to market Limited Edition artist reproductions of my artwork.

The website was set up in order to market my product to both galleries and the general public and provides the highest quality of reproduction that complies with standards as defined by the Fine Art Trade Guild for artist's reproduction, and each piece is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Please visit http://www.thepainterscollection.com

"The Home of Quality Artist's Collectables".

Butchers Row, Coventry, circa 1890

When I was a lad, my father gave me a book about the S.O.E. (special operations executive) in WWII a section of which dealt with the Enigma machine and the code breakers of Bletchley Park. The book explained that we (the British) were actually accurately deciphering German military codes as early as 1941 and further explained that one of Winston Churchill's hardest decisions was a decision to put up no defence to the extensive bombing by the Germans of Leicester and Coventry as to do so would have alerted the Germans that we were reading their codes and would have jeopardised the planned outcome of the war.

Years later I came across an old photograph from a glass plate negative and realised that this was one of the areas referred to in this story. I was compelled to create this drawing of it, which was no easy task as I had to find a number of different reproductions taken from the original glass negative in order to piece together the detail which was not present as a whole in any of the reproductions themselves.

High Quality Limited Edition Artist Reproductions of my pen and ink drawing are available and can be found by visiting "http://www.thepainterscollection.com".

Beverley Barge, the Syntan

In 2004 I was lucky enough to take a river journey on the then newly restored Beverley barge, the Syntan after receiving an invitation from Mr Iain Campbell of the Beverley Barge Preservation Society.
In 1999 Mr Campbell and his friends had discovered the Beverley barge Syntan as a wreck near Doncaster and had brought her back to Beverley to begin a "restoration" project and to this end had formed the Beverley Barge Preservation Society in order to raise the necessary finance to accomplish the task.
As Mr Campbell had been of considerable assistance to me, I created 3 small animations of the Syntan as a thank you to him for his assistance. To learn more about the Syntan or to contact Mr Campbell and his friends visit "http://www.syntanbarge.org.uk".

Christophers Dream

"Christopher's Dream" 2001 was created from a jumbled collection of computer models that I had created some time previously. The helicopter was my first real computer model, a Wessex Lynx modelled in around 1999. I felt very "accomplished" as I had worked out the setup for the independent rotations that needed to travel with and match the movement of the helicopter body. I also remember how at the time the demands on computer memory drove me to be in a continuous upgrading mode with my hardware in order for me to create this animation, which was my first attempt to "tell a story".

Dockland Illusion 1983

The above painting was painted using "Humbrol"enamels above a sheet of well "primed" 6mm sheet steel mounted upon a hard wood frame.
The central image is the same as my painting "River Mosaic" that is utilised as the "Banner" for this "Blog".

At the time that I created "Dockland Illusion" I was fascinated by pattern and realised that it could be used to form an image, as in the principle of "mosaic" that utilises small coloured cubes to represent more complex forms, but that also pattern could be used to distress or disrupt an image as with for example raindrops on a windscreen or that indeed it could also be used to integrate multiple images into a single "whole"..

This idea became the underlying principle in the creation of this piece as at the centre pattern is used to form the image (in the form of tiny squares of colour) whereas in the surrounding "outside" areas pattern is used to disrupt and also to form the idea of a dockland surrounding (integrating a number of seperate "images" into the illusion of a singular "whole")..