My Life as an Artist
Before my life became publicly associated with mediumship, writing, television and spiritual work, my first great passion was art. As a young man, I was deeply absorbed in painting, sculpture and visual imagination, and for a time, I felt certain that my future would be as an artist. I was accepted into St Martin’s Art College, and my early work explored not only technique and composition, but the mysterious inner imagery that arises from the depths of the mind.
Much of my painting from this period was inspired by what I would now describe as eidetic imagery: vivid pictures that appeared inwardly with a strange clarity, almost as if they had been projected onto the mind’s eye. The challenge was to hold these elusive images long enough to translate them into paint. Looking back, I can see that this same faculty — the ability to see inwardly, symbolically and intuitively — would later become central to my work as a medium, writer and spiritual seeker.
One of the most important moments in my early artistic life was an exhibition called Paintings and Preludes, created with my friend Gary “Skip” Conway and the avant-garde jazz composer Monty Warlock. The exhibition combined abstract painting and music, exploring the relationship between colour, rhythm, mood and sound. Gary and I worked together on the paintings, with Gary helping to plan and mask the forms while I developed the airbrush work. The result was a series of abstract pieces that attempted to give visual shape to music — a kind of synaesthesia, where sound became colour and rhythm became form.
Paintings and Preludes was first shown at Southampton Municipal Art Gallery and later toured other UK galleries. Eventually, the work was also exhibited in Harrods in London. For a young artist, this was a significant encouragement and a confirmation that the inner world I was trying to express could speak to others, too.
Although I no longer paint in the same way, the artist in me never disappeared. The visual imagination that once found expression on canvas later became part of my writing, my television work, and my mediumship. I eventually opened an advertising agency, where I was able to use my artistic training and visual instincts in a more commercial form — creating ideas, images and campaigns for clients. The discipline of advertising taught me how to communicate quickly and powerfully, while my artistic background gave me a natural sense of image, atmosphere and impact.
The picture shown here is an enhanced version of one of my most interesting pieces from that early period. It reflects the strange, symbolic and visionary quality that fascinated me as a young artist. For me, it is more than an old painting: it is a glimpse of the inner world that has shaped so much of my later work — the world of imagination, intuition and spiritual vision.