Profile

My father was a talented professional artist and a picture framer and so from an early age I drew, painted and made things. I would spend hours sitting next to my dad, painting or drawing while he did the same, and I gained my love of art from him. If I wasn’t drawing I would be in my dad's workshop, cutting up card and making things; usually vehicles for my Action Man. I left school with the absolute minimum qualifications to get into St. Albans College of Art to study design on a BTEC course but after three years I realised I wasn’t really very interested in advertising or coming up with new designs for shampoo bottles so after a few years I applied to Bath College of Higher Education to study a degree in Fine Art.

My connection with the area

My dad was a great story teller and would recount many Christmases he’d spent in Kentish Town, or working at the Road Motor Department, and his many near misses during the height of the Blitz. I was born and grew up in St. Albans and for me; Kentish Town was just a place I passed through on the way to the centre of London where everything happened. A great friend moved here in 2005 and that was the first time I had actually got off the train here and was also the first time I went to Mario’s Cafe.

I moved here five years ago and it gradually dawned on me that these were the streets and places in my dad's anecdotes. In the first couple of years of moving here I walked the length and breadth of Kentish Town; all the time knowing that I was walking in the footsteps of my dad as a young man. I couldn’t have been happier about this and to know that I had a real connection with this unassuming place that I had ignored for years.

I began to feel more at home here than I had anywhere else in London and I still love walking around the area today, (for anyone who likes bricks, Anglers Lane is one of the best roads you could walk down). Most of the work in this exhibition has come about from things I have seen or almost seen while walking the streets of Kentish Town.

Contact

Mobile: 07858 156 173
Email: coombsmp5@gmail.com

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