Bruce McLean

In 1958, every Saturday at the ice rink, I would listen to rock and roll music while trying to impress girls and smoking Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes. This shaping of my identity helped me to become a modern artist. I was 14 and painted my bedroom in black emulsion paint (which my granny called black emotion paint). In the suburban area of Clarkston Glasgow, all this made me a mini-legend – the original Clarkston Daftie.

I had seen the works of the French artists in Studio an International Arts Magazine that my father had subscribed to since the mid-twenties and I was fascinated by the likes of Pierre Soulages , Cesar, Georges Mathieu, Riopelle. At every given moment, I attempted to make a quick Soulages – black abstract lines on white. When I eventually went to art school at the age of 16, just as the Beatles were surfacing, my inspirational teacher, Sinclair Thompson, introduced me to the works of Nicholas De Stael. I then, of course, started making de Stael type paintings – still lifes, black on black, grey seascapes with ships in great slabs of oil paint over much under-painting. I sort of knew this was tosh even then, and I am still using much of what I learned as a young artist, still attempting to be a modern artist in my new rock and cave paintings. I think I am now at last on a roll.