I guess, in truth, I have always been an artist, but you never realise that until you actually start to get into the meat and spuds of actually trying to do it for a living. But by the phrase “always been an artist” I think what I am really saying is that I have always been a creative, which is the same but different.
From a young age I loved colouring books, and would spend hours colouring in all of the images within them, and that must be where it all started. I’m not quite sure at what age I started to draw birds of prey (a subject matter I intend to return to soon) but it must have been after my subject choices at senior school, as many people couldn’t understand why I hadn’t taken art as a subject, so lets say when I was around 14, which would have been about 1976, pretty much 50 years ago, jeez I am old.
I don’t have any of those drawings any longer, all lost in the midst’s of time, but I still have the memories of creating them, a pencil stroke at a time. I think the reason I didn’t take up art at school was because a relation of mine at the time had his own engineering company, and my family felt as though I should go and work for him, as he and my aunt didn’t have any children to pass the business on to, so my future was kind of set.
So, fast forward through a failed marriage and several jobs later, working for family isn’t all its cracked up to be, and I started creating art again.
Coming out of a 14 year marriage at the age of 36 with nothing was tough, very tough. I had to go back to live with my father and his partner for a while whilst I got my life back on track, and feeling completely washed out and on the shelf wasn’t really conducive to creating art, however, meeting a new partner later that year, changed my outlook enormously.
I painted this in pastels in 1998, from the date on the back this must have been just over a month after I met, who was to be, my second wife. Finding love again obviously had a major impact on my creativity and outlook in general.
I have to admit the composition wasn’t mine, as I had seen the image on a card, created by another artist, and I loved it so much that I felt the need to reproduce it for her, and as you can see we still have it today hanging in out living room.
So we started to build a life together, both progressing our careers, which meant that I didn’t have a lot of time for creativity. I would dabble a little here and there, but nothing serious.
I have always had a fascination for the French Impressionist movement, possibly because of my name, there aren’t many famous Vincent’s around, and Van Gogh kind of stuck out to me, especially after the Don McLean song.
My wife and I travelled to Paris, for a long weekend at some point, a beautiful city, in parts, but what stuck out for me was the Musee D’Orsay, a gallery full of art from the Impressionist movement. I had long been a fan of Degas and his collection there was mesmerising. It lit a spark in me that had been waiting for years to be set alight, and I just had to create art again.
So I got into it, at this time through drawing, I have always loved a pencil. Seeing what can be achieved with just a piece of lead wrapped in a coat of wood has always inspired me, so I started to draw the female form.
Materials and hair have always amazed me in art, and I love to recreate what I see on paper or canvas. I got started again.
I saw an image similar to this, which I used as a reference piece. I loved the contrast between the elegance of the ballerina and the hard city. I changed the car from a workaday Toyota to the timeless E-Type Jaguar, named the restaurant across the junction after myself, and subdued the background.
This next piece I saw as a photograph which I used again as a reference piece, changing slight elements of it, I loved the leather jacket and the visible mechanics of the motorcycle.
Neither of these pieces were for sale, I just created them for my own reference and pleasure, but I loved the process.
Jobs came and went on the greasy pole of middle management in engineering, but my artwork remained a constant. The more I created the more I wanted to create, but I kept this quiet, not wanting to almost feeling like I might be discovered for the amateur that I felt that I was, the imposter syndrome ran deep in me at this time.
Around this time, I’m thinking that it was 2018ish, my son was travelling a lot, and living all over the world. He had spent over three years living in Australia and New Zealand, came back to the UK for a while, before jetting off to Spain to live for around two years. At this point he was living with an old girlfriend who he had got back together with after a year or so apart, and things were going well for him.
Whilst he was living in Valencia, we visited them, its a great city, and I asked him if you was going to pop the question, which he said he would, and did, so in 2019 they were married, in Lithuania, the country of his brides birth.
As he was not Roman Catholic, they had to be married in the Lithuanian version of a registry office, so that they could have the ceremony blessed in a church, with all of the usual trimmings, the following day.
As a wedding gift, I photographed their first kiss as husband and wife at the registrar, and drew it in graphite for them.
They loved the gift, and I was very proud of it.
At some point around this time, I discovered gold leaf. I remember sitting in a furniture showroom at a salesman’s desk, discussing the purchase of a sofa, and behind him was an abstract piece of artwork, with gold leaf on it, and it go me thinking, I wonder what that material is like to work with.
Taking my ballerina subject matter and references from other artists I admired, I decided to go all in.
I hired a photo studio and a ballerina and got to work. Looking back on this now I cant believe that I did all that. I had never taken photographs like this before or even hired a model or muse of any kind, let alone a full blown studio for a day, what was I thinking, but I got to it.
I must have taken around 400 images on the day, but I managed to work it down to eight images that I wanted to create as a collection.
I drew the images out on handmade paper, and gilded the exterior of each image in 24 carat gold leaf, mounted them all in floating frames, with art glass to cut down the reflections and decided to exhibit them at an art fair.
I loved these pieces and still do, but alas none of them sold at my first art fair, a very demoralising turn of events.
Life however was about to get a whole lot worse, worse than I could have ever imagined.
On the 21ts August 2020, I had been sending a few messages to my son mostly about Formula One, we were both big fans, but none of them were replied to. There had been a problem with my phone that day, and for some reason that I am unable to recall I was unable to receive any massages, then all of a sudden, several missed calls from Lithuania, and from my daughter in Shrewsbury, I knew immediately that something was up.
I called my daughter, and the world stopped, my son had died from a heat attack at the age of only 34. He was a month away from his 35th birthday, and just over a month from his first wedding anniversary.
I was stunned, and didn’t know what to do, it was totally unexpected, he was in his prime, to the outside world, fit and healthy, making his way in the world, his business was starting to make him some money, he was really enjoying his life, who knew anything like this could happen, certainly not me.
When you lose someone close to you, it is devastating, when you lose a child, even an adult one, it’s indescribable
there are no words, everything felt meaningless. I wanted the world to stop and pay its respects, but it didn’t, everything else just kept moving on at its own pace, the anger, sadness and utter feeling of uselessness swelled inside me, how was I going to carry on with this devastation in my life.
We had to have him flown back from Lithuania, an autopsy was legally required, and the obligatory coroners enquiry, all things I never thought I would have to do in my lifetime.
I had to battle to get him laid to rest in our village, even though my wife and I had lived there for almost ten years, they would not allow it, until a funeral director told me to say that it would be a family plot, beaurocracy is an awful thing.
The next two years were desperate times for me, on the face of it, I had moved on, but underneath the thin veil of normality, the grief burned inside me on a daily basis. I had to find something to make sense of all of this, and I couldn’t.
What never gets said in times like this is that it will get far worse before it gets any better. I know that’s hard to believe, but trust me it does. The anger that was continuously boiling up inside me and had no vent. In year one, I was incredibly sad, depressed, didn’t care for anything, didn’t want to do anything, didn’t feel anything, everything felt fake. I kept imagining him being in the house, kept dreaming about seeing him outside, but couldn’t get to talk to him.
I would wake up in the morning feeling ok, and then feeling that something was wrong, and then you remembered what had happened, and you had no desire to leave the bedroom. It was as though a part of you had died also, and that now and for evermore, you would be a different person, and that much at least, was very true.
I just permanently wanted to be alone, but I also wanted the pain to reduce, so I turned to alcohol, and whilst going to the pub meant that I had to mix with people, my wife and I always sat alone, up a dark corner, not acknowledging anyone, just drinking to forget, every day.
It worked for a while, but as usual with booze, it then makes you melancholy, and then depressed, and it all starts again. Booze is an evil mistress, a crooked crutch, a very poor friend, and she never rewards you with her initial promise, but it felt like this was all I had to lean on, so I did, for about 5-6 months.
My outlook got so bad by the end of year two that I sought medical help. I was prescribed anti-depressants by my doctor, and they worked, up to a point. Really bad days were still as bad, but they happened less frequently, and progressively with less intensity.
One thing I did know was that my art calmed me, so little by little, I started creating again. Not much initially, but over a few months I relied on it more and more until it became a worthy crutch, an escape, something to focus on away from all of the depression and sadness.
Following on from the failure (as I then saw it) of my first art fair, I decided that I needed a new subject matter. On reflection I could, and maybe should, have carried on with the ballerinas, but I couldn’t face the negativity around that subject that I still felt due to no sales, foolish now, I know, but it was a real feeling then.
I decided on cars, classic cars, a long held love of mine, it just felt right, and, as I now felt like a different person, and I wanted to honour my son and his legacy, I suppose looking back now, I wanted to keep him alive in some way, I rebranded myself.
My son had worked for himself for a number of years, in recruitment, and he had started his own company. He had called it Sterling Lee Recruitment. He had previously told me that all of the best recruitment companies had two first names as their name: Michael Page, Harry James, Robert Walters etc. He chose Stirling, after Stirling Moss, and Lee was his middle name, the name my mother wanted to call me, but my father insisted on naming me after himself. So Stirling Lee Fine Art was born.
I entered as many car shows as possible to build my new brand, with a portfolio of work.
And to carry on my gilding practice, I loved to add the emblem of the marque and gild it in platinum or palladium, as neither of these materials tarnish like silver does.
I did create some excellent work, always trying to produce art that no other artist had, never an easy thing to do. I painted in acrylics, in a very technical manner, quite controlled and photorealistic in a way, which was obviously linked to my engineering background as a design engineer and the need for attention to the details.
My ability improved, and sales came, but nothing to get crazy about or even think about doing this as a full time profession.
But my art gave me more than just the financial benefit, it started to get me to look to the future with hope and optimism, something that I had not felt for a long time. I actively started to look forward to shows, started to plan collections of work, and plan how I would do each show, feelings I would never have had without my art.
Continually looking for new ways to create work, with new subject matter, I decided to create pure emblems. Not just the emblem alone, but adding gold leaf into the mix. I decided to create what would be called my golden car mirrors ( a title that irritated me initially ). I painted the marque emblem on the back of one piece of glass, and then gilded another piece in 24 carat gold leaf, and placed them together in a deep frame with a spacer bar in between them.
These really worked for me and sold ok, and again I had created something new, something of my own, something of our own as I was creating this with my sons name over it, and again this helped me push through the depression and loss.
Around this time I had really had enough of working for other people. I was working for a good company, who had really looked after me following my sons passing, but I craved to work full time on my art. So I asked if I could reduce my hours so that I could build up my art business, and fortunately, they allowed me to do this.
So, five days became four and then a few months later became three, and then probably about six months into the reduced hours, I decided to take my private pension early and just do it, go full time, so I did.
Whilst it hasn’t been easy, I wish that I had been able to make this decision earlier in my life, but as I said earlier, my sons passing changed me forever, and I realised that we are only here once, and that I had to follow my passion if I was able to do so, so that’s what I did, at the age of 61.
My work has morphed again, now into glue chipped glass art, but I am still recreating emblems, but now larger and with a much more detailed process, which I am still learning from, but this has further helped me to move my life forward. I refrain from using the term “moving on” because I don’t feel as though I will ever move on from what happened, but I still have my life, to get to where I want it to be, and I can move forwards with this.
I have learned many things these past few years, but the main thing is that none of us get out of this alive, and lots of people just don’t realise this. My son passed at the age of 34, decades too soon, I am still here, at nearly 65, and who knows how long my turn will last, but I have to do what I am doing, as I need it in my life, and that’s what’s important to me.
As my therapist once told me, we are all works in progress, so don’t be too hard on yourself, but progress as much as you can.
Without my art (and I have to say the long suffering support of my wife) I’m not sure where I would be now, my loss could have destroyed me and all that I had, it could have taken me in a completely different direction, it could have destroyed my relationship with my wife, it is very easy to see how all of the above could have transpired, but thankfully they did not, and I am still here creating, making new artwork, that nobody else can, because its all mine, and in some way I have to thank my son for that, even though I would give it all back in a second to have him back.
I no longer work under my sons company name as it had started to bring up sad conversations with clients, and after much deliberation and questioning of myself, I decided to work under my own name once more, and have been doing so for the last six or so months. Another part of moving forward with my life.
So my second rebranding as an artist, on this creative journey, has brought me to where I am now.
If you would like to join me on my journey, you can find out more about me and my work on my website, just click here , and you can also follow me on Instagram at by clicking here .
Thank you for reading, and I hope that my experience can help unfortunate others who have experienced a similar loss.