Queens Road Station Peckham

• Dimensions: 61cmx61cm
• Media: Acrylic paint on canvas
• Year: 2000
• Sold: Yes

This was an early painting of the train that would take me home from my first secondary school art teaching job. It was a steep learning curve for a young teacher, with regular fights breaking out in the classroom. My HOD was a lovely man and gave me great advice on the mistakes I was making. I had the freedom to teach what I thought was important, but it was a while before I learnt how to manage a classroom and give out and collect in precious materials. We had a budget of 72p per child per year, I think, and every time a 4B pencil dropped, my heart broke with the lead.

Each week I’d come home with no voice. The pupils were using pots of powder paint, which had great potential as a projectiles, jet trails of coloured powder filled the air at times, and I’d turn around to find myself faced with bitterly unhappy multicolored members of my class. Somehow, my suit jacket would be patterned with chalkboard rubber markings. The pupils could be very funny at times and mischievous, in a way I secretly admired. That spirit would overcome a lot in life.

I soon got rid of the powder paint and introduced real paint and decent brushes. I binned the dull colour wheel exercises and taught them to mix colours from primaries at will. We worked on figurative narrative projects and talked about art theory. Analytical cubism became a great point of discussion with its stolen iconography, and we went with it in both sculpture and painting projects. We managed to get permission to visit @nationalgallery in force, to see and discuss real paintings. If the pupils learnt anything, I learnt ten times more. I certainly learnt to draw reams of Tupacs and Biggies, which were very well received- ‘OH MY DAYS MR GRAY!’.

I arrived at 8am and left at 6pm, my head fried, buzzing on pints of sickly sweet black coffee, after keeping the artroom open for pupils who only had empty homes to return to. Difficult children with complicated lives became gentle and eager artists after the school bell went.

The fella running for the train is a version of me I think. Eager to get back to a silent, safe home. A girlfriend, a cat, and a drink.