Wallace Kandinsky said, “The true artist is a lonely individual, a visionary with a spiritual development”.
I am a second generation of Italian-Australian background and grew up in a middle-class, working-class background.
Alien to the arts, my parents did not want their son to do art, but I loved art as a child in school and my art became my life.
As a child I suffered dyslexia, while at school and all I could do was draw well. The other kids would line up to have tattoo’s drawn on the back of their hands by me, with their favourite Super Hero’s, usually, “Superman”.
I became obsessed with comics. I had priceless comics that my father accidentally took for old newspapers, which he burnt. I was so upset when this happened and after this crisis, somehow, I decided to get into an Art School.
I did a two year Art Certificate course at a Technical College and then a three year Art Diploma course at a University Art School, but I did not fit the model a Art School.
I remember when I was at Alexander Mackie College which is called COFA now, one of the Librarians said to me, that I, borrowed more books than any other student.