(above: my vision of the destruction of my oesophageal tumour - little bastard.)

Perhaps a little more about me and my situation would help the reader to get a “feel“ for the content, as any narrative will always benefit from flesh on the bones - at least enough to picture the life and times of the writer, his background, influences and the environmental conditions in which the work was created. I am not a professional wordsmith. The visually creative skills have been my main means of earning a crust, and even now I ask myself how I can be so presumptuous as to pose as a writer. But in the end I make no apology. I’m simply telling you a story about my life and ultimate demise, peppered with analogy and spiced with experience.

I was (only just) a “war baby“, being born in February 1945, a few months before the armistice. My mother had carried me in her womb through the dark days of soot-blackened bombsites to the dreaded sound of doodlebugs, and I’m sure the wail of air-raid sirens is something I heard clearly and memorably whilst still waiting to emerge into the pale half-light of almost peace.

My father was a private, intense individual, an eccentric violin player of no mean accomplishment (he reached his zenith as Leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham)whose brilliant career, commenced in glory as a lead violin at the age of 14, was later to be demolished almost overnight by the onset of tuberculosis, resulting in a huge portion of his lung being excised, along with several ribs, thus rendering impossible his daily exercise - the vigorous raising and lowering of an arm on the end of a violin bow for several hours at a time.

He never recovered totally from the withdrawal of opportunity from his extraordinary talent and became monumentally embittered, a man savaged by circumstance and ravaged by his reaction to it.

My father needed my contribution to the family, so at the age of sixteen I left my beloved school and got a job with a London advertising agency, Arks Publicity in John Street WC1, who paid me the princely sum of £4 a week while training and also gave me day release to pursue my studies at St Martin’s School of Art. Of this I was allowed to keep ten shillings for myself - the rest appropriated by my father.

My career has since been reasonably straightforward, learning graphics at a time when every piece of type was calculated by the typographer before the typesetter would provide printed sheets of paper to be stuck in place with Cow Gum. Copied by camera, the work would be converted to blocks or plates before reproduction as advertisements or printed literature. In those days, and until the computer took the throne in all matters graphic, there were individuals whose jobs consisted of creating hand lettering, preparing text for type, cutting and pasting (literally) artwork onto artboard for the copy camera, retouching photos using an airbrush, and preparing visuals with deft strokes of the Magic Marker. These at a glance would need to provide the client with an amazingly accurate preview of the final job, as computer printouts simply didn’t exist then.

I worked in advertising agencies and studios, cutting my teeth on corporate development work and publicity projects for very large clients, including Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, EMI, General Motors, Hertz, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, The London Pavilion, London Transport, Ponds, United Biscuits and many others over a number of years.

Whilst writing this blog I am currently engaged in a number of branding and interior design commissions, as well as marketing consultancy. I had become a Member of the (later to be Chartered) Institute of Marketing in 1976, as I felt that too many designers were creating images that looked pretty but simply didn’t work, as they were based on unsound marketing concepts.

Recently I was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. This has unfortunately spread to bone and liver, and so my time here is apparently limited. I have embarked upon a process of creative catharsis - writing, painting, drawing, aside of my everyday work which goes on as usual. This is combined with Qi Gong and meditation.

Throughout this process I’ve decided to get some of my thoughts on canvas. I now have around a dozen square canvases ranging from 300mm x300mm to 1000mm x 1000mm, and the first has been “launched” by the impact of acrylic paint on its surface. This is a small canvas and I am delighted to see it happening at last. It is entitled “Chromodoris Annae” and takes its colours and design features from a nudibranch or sea-slug recently photographed in “National Geographic”.

Here’s my thought process. I am calling this series of paintings “Nature’s Palette”. Why? Because I am drawing my inspiration from some of the flora and fauna that this good earth provides naturally. This involves, colour, texture and form taken from insects, fish, crustaceans, animals, birds, flowers and plants, all shining examples of what could not (in my opinion) happen purely at random.

As an artist, when I look at some of our natural phenomena I somehow just “know” that a Supreme Designer’s mind is behind their creation. It’s simply not good enough to say that their appearance happened by chance, and, by committing them to canvas, I believe I will be at least making my view clear, that through the very appreciation we have for beautiful things - art, music, nature - we can be sure that there is a purpose behind it all...

By using the vivid colours, remarkable textures and intricate forms to be found everywhere on earth (and probably beyond), I am “borrowing” a palette of such wealth and power that I feel almost as if I am cheating by calling the canvases my own work. You will see no actual creatures or botanical specimens, but merely my abstract “translation” using the palette. I am concentrating my studies on a wide variety of life form, and these twelve pictures will, I hope, get it out of my system and into the open.

I will be publishing a photo of each painting as they are completed.

Anyone reading this - please send me if you wish any photographic examples (jpegs) of the kind of thing you may associate with nature’s design - all grist to the mill! Please send to ososki@btinternet.com.

If you want to know more about me, visit my weblog at http://ohsocosy.wordpress.com