Travels With
A Paintbox
Robert
Sedgley
Maybe it was growing up on a
characterless housing estate in the
post war Industrial Midlands, a period
which, although a happy time, seems
in memory far from being fields of
rosy tints, but rather a little way up
the grey scale of general drabness,
that led me to escape when possible
to seek more colourful hours in the
countryside.
I was brought up a cyclist, so
Sundays from my earliest memory
represented an escape from the city,
and it was on a bike aged eighteen
that I first visited Spain, with my
brother and two friends on a tour of
the Pyrenees.
In those days even the busiest
roads were almost devoid of traffic
and we could leave our mounts with
full saddlebags undisturbed by the
side of the road while we rooted
around mountain villages in search
of lunch or a bed for the night.
On leaving Junior Art School -
where I learned the art of lettering,
a study which developed a sense of
design and spacing, so important to
the burgeoning artist - age fifteen, I