That’s me out in my garden painting and this is my first blog. It’s intended to run alongside my web site at www.alanartmarket.com, paint in some of the background I can’t put onto the website let you know who I am, what I’m all about, where I’m from, and where I think I’m going…. and not just about my art either.
So where will I start then? Well I suppose the main thing you need to know is that my real name is Alan Cox and I’m a self taught artist, retired from the rat race, and living here in Ballagh, in the lovely County Roscommon in Ireland. There’s the beautiful Slieve Bawn mountain facing my front door, the tranquil River Shannon flows into Lough Ree ten minutes down the lane, and there’s even roses and honeysuckle growing in the front garden. In fact there’s almost half an acre of garden here we’ve developed over the last 14 years. Monets Giverny it isn’t, but it is our little piece of Eden.
I’m certainly a long way from the streets of Manchester in the north of England where I was born in 1941 and spent the first 40 years of my life
As a young fella I had all sorts of jobs including 2 years in a monastery, but then, in the early 60’s, I met Alicia, (she’s from Leigh in Lancashire,) got married and qualified as a teacher. Roughly in that order. Leigh, by the way was formerly a mill town, so that makes her a real ‘Lancashire Lass’, but nowhere near as corny as Gracie Fields!
I taught for almost twenty years in primary schools around the Manchester area and in answer to the obvious question…. no I didn’t specifically teach art. Far from it. My idea of an art lesson at that time was to issue every child with a piece of sugar paper, a box of crayons and tell them to draw a picture of a football match while I got on with correcting their English essays. I dread to think how many potential David Hockneys I killed off with that attitude!
Then in the early 80’s, along with Alicia who was also a teacher, I came to live in Ireland. We’d no children, just a cat and a dog, so that facilitated our decision to throw in the teaching, and do our own thing. We both have Irish ancestors, mine from County Leitrim and Alicia’s from Tuam in County Galway, so that made the choice of Ireland as a bolt hole from the rat race a natural one.
We ran a craft business for 5 years, ( but still no painting by me!), and then we returned to England where we ran a stately home in Worcestershire for 8 years. Now that was fun but I’ll come back to all that later.
In 1994 we returned to Ireland, and bought this cottage in County Roscommon and it was then that I began painting, and Alicia got her chance to create her own garden from scratch.. Well, lets face it we’ve both done the 9 to 5 routine, bought the tee shirts and all that. Now we’re both retired, and at long last really doing our own thing in our own way …and loving every minute of it. In fact I don’t know how either of us ever fitted ‘working for a living’ in!
So where will I start then? Well I suppose the main thing you need to know is that my real name is Alan Cox and I’m a self taught artist, retired from the rat race, and living here in Ballagh, in the lovely County Roscommon in Ireland. There’s the beautiful Slieve Bawn mountain facing my front door, the tranquil River Shannon flows into Lough Ree ten minutes down the lane, and there’s even roses and honeysuckle growing in the front garden. In fact there’s almost half an acre of garden here we’ve developed over the last 14 years. Monets Giverny it isn’t, but it is our little piece of Eden.
I’m certainly a long way from the streets of Manchester in the north of England where I was born in 1941 and spent the first 40 years of my life
As a young fella I had all sorts of jobs including 2 years in a monastery, but then, in the early 60’s, I met Alicia, (she’s from Leigh in Lancashire,) got married and qualified as a teacher. Roughly in that order. Leigh, by the way was formerly a mill town, so that makes her a real ‘Lancashire Lass’, but nowhere near as corny as Gracie Fields!
I taught for almost twenty years in primary schools around the Manchester area and in answer to the obvious question…. no I didn’t specifically teach art. Far from it. My idea of an art lesson at that time was to issue every child with a piece of sugar paper, a box of crayons and tell them to draw a picture of a football match while I got on with correcting their English essays. I dread to think how many potential David Hockneys I killed off with that attitude!
Then in the early 80’s, along with Alicia who was also a teacher, I came to live in Ireland. We’d no children, just a cat and a dog, so that facilitated our decision to throw in the teaching, and do our own thing. We both have Irish ancestors, mine from County Leitrim and Alicia’s from Tuam in County Galway, so that made the choice of Ireland as a bolt hole from the rat race a natural one.
We ran a craft business for 5 years, ( but still no painting by me!), and then we returned to England where we ran a stately home in Worcestershire for 8 years. Now that was fun but I’ll come back to all that later.
In 1994 we returned to Ireland, and bought this cottage in County Roscommon and it was then that I began painting, and Alicia got her chance to create her own garden from scratch.. Well, lets face it we’ve both done the 9 to 5 routine, bought the tee shirts and all that. Now we’re both retired, and at long last really doing our own thing in our own way …and loving every minute of it. In fact I don’t know how either of us ever fitted ‘working for a living’ in!
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