Back in 1985 when leaving school in west London I had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t get particularly good grades so the outlook wasn’t too great. The careers office at school set me up with a job at a screenprinters in Chiswick, West London. I would start at the bottom and work my way up to just above the bottom. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but we worked with some of the most talented and high profile artists of the time. People like Peter Blake, Erte and Patrick Caulfield. The studio even collaborated with David Hockney once or twice. This was all lost on a 17 year old from Hounslow who knew nothing of these people. I learned a lot about working life from the four or five others that worked there but realised after about 18 months that it wasn’t for me.
I then moved into photography and worked at my dad’s company, Jaye Photography, who carried out all aspects of industrial, commercial and wedding photography. As well as learning how to take pictures I also learnt my way around the darkroom printing black & white prints. Sometimes these were montonous print runs of hundreds but other times you could practice printing your own shots and learn while doing so how to burn and dodge, how to mix chemicals and how using different print papers could change the look of your photo. I did all of the deliveries and collections so would spend much of the time on the road learning my way around the west of London.
After photography I gravitated to TV production, don’t ask me how. I got involved with the company that produced a children’s programme called Playdays. This involved driving the Playdays bus to various cities around the country and promoting the touring stage show of the series. It also sent me for a month to Austria filming and another in the Hebridean island of Barra. Good times. All expenses paid working holidays. Yay!
After this area of employment petered out I decided to take my destiny into my own hands and begin a self employed journey into painting & decorating. My company name was Henrich, a mash up of two names, Henderson/Richardson, but unfortunately everyone just thought I was of German heritage and called me Heinrich! This was hard work and I found out that I really wasn’t too keen on being up a ladder all day with a fear of heights.
This led me up to the time when I moved to Ireland with my new family. We decided that I would be a house dad as my wife had a job lined up already. This new period of my life was looking after an 8 month old baby in the west of Ireland and getting used to being in a new country with only a common language as a life raft. It was tough at first but got easier as time went on and now, after 20+ years, we are well and truly settled.
This brings me to Jet Black Squares. Both my children are grown up now and don’t need lifts to school and back every day. I found myself in need of a new challenge. My sister did a safari with Jet and suggested it could be a good fit for me with my history in photography. It didn’t need much thinking about. I liked the premise and was keen to express myself artistically in a way that was productive, so I signed up. And haven’t looked back. I am loving the challenge of finding creative output on an almost daily basis and I hope to carry on doing so for a long time to come.
Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that I wrote a novel and self published on Amazon. And I think I made £3.60 in profit.
Written by Paul, Jet Black Squares Sligo