In Memory Of Mark Speight

WOW!

Sometimes you find things that transport you right back in time, as if it only happened yesterday.

I found this flyer for the ‘colour’ exhibition in which my school art department participated. My entry, an oil pastel colour wheel, was also chosen to be on the promotional material distributed all around Ealing. It’ll be 24 years next month!

As exciting as it was and is to find the flyer amongst my many years collecting art work and visual inspiration, this post is bittersweet.

Along with the likes of Tony Hart’s Hartbeat and Neil Buchanan’s Art Attack I grew up watching children’s art programme SMart, hosted by Kirsten O’Brien and the late Mark Speight. Mark was a cartoonist and graphic artist and he was such a huge inspiration for me. I loved him. His art work was flawless. He was so passionate in his creativity and you could tell he loved it. In every episode Mark made me feel that I could draw like him.

The day of the opening, I had just missed him but my friend Victoria got to meet him. At the time I was totally jealous. Now it makes me sad because, in April 2008, at the same age I am now, he took his life because he could no longer live without his partner, who died in January of that year. It makes me sad that I never got to see him grow as an artist but I am so thankful that his memory and the impact that he had on me lives on in my artwork.

Mark Speight you will forever have a place in my creative heART.

One of my favourite SMart episodes: Season 11 Episode 7 – Imagination