Accentuate

Thanks Jamie - you sumed up how I feel completly too, brilliant and I dont have to write it all down!

Yes - I have had to accept that I am disabled - often or not by other people or society and thats not an excuse, get out or reason to \'misbehave\'...and yes I feel that now I am almost that artist I deamed about at the age of six. Too long I have been \'outside\' but then again I like being \'Outside\'? I like being an \'Outsider artist\' too - a definition applied to me I am far happier about than \'Disabled artist\' whom some assume I care to be labled as - well I don\'t, thats something I personally wouldn\'t do. It does not mean I turn my back and diys-regard all things \'Disability arts\'.

Then there is my work which to me is not \'disability arts\' and so not \'limited\' by that designation or the \'view\' - good or bad that seem to trot behind that definition. All my work ismultilayered and is however informed by me, and not just my dyslexia or my aspergers but my upbringing, my likes, my dys-likes, my dreams as a child, the trips each christmas to the Lakes, the caves on Malta I visited at 8 years old, the first book I read all the way through (treasure Island and I nbought it for 12.5 pence!), the times I was abused at school, the times I have found love, the discrimination, Cornwall\' rocks and beaches, a Tangerine dream concert in 1976 and on and on and on - I won\'t stop the list is endless. The influences are wider than meer words but they are all experienced and seen through \'my eyes\' and those eyess that have known nothing other than the inability to read or the desire to \'place in order\'.

I guess I am saying I have learnt to be open - neutral - unrestricted - unlimitted in both influence, autobiographical opportunity and medium. If you felt it - there is no reason why you can\'t express it through your artwork and if others can \'read\' between the lines of your work it dosent have to come with a label.