A Mud Story

 

I was waking by the side of the Thames when I saw a man collecting mud in buckets. I asked what he was doing. And he said he was doing art with it – and asked me if I would help him back to his workshop as the buckets were heavy.  I said yes, and as we were walking back, I asked him when he started making art out of mud.

‘About 20 years ago,’ he said he’d done hundreds of pieces using mud.

After about twenty minutes we reached his studio which was a rundown building in the back streets of London. I walked through the broken door into a room with white boards covering the brick walls and sheets covered the floor with dried mud. When we put the buckets down, he asked me if I wanted to try it.

He passed me some overalls, gloves and a mask and I started out on a small board, drawing with the mud.  It was really relaxing which surprised me because I am not the best at drawing, but when I’d finished, he came over and asked me to take a step back and look at what I had done.

‘Do you want a cuppa? he asked and went to make it. I was surprised at what I’d drawn. It was a house in the middle of a forest with a lake.

We went outside to drink the tea and got talking. I asked him about his life. He said he had grown up in Scotland but split up with his wife and lost everything. That’s wen he decided to up sticks and moved to London with nothing but the clothes on his back and a load of paintings to sell. Luckily, he met some people who had a spare room. He moved in and has been there ever since. He found his studio by luck, just walking around and then stumbled across it. More luck, he rang the number on the door and the owner said he could use if for free just to keep it occupied and that was 10 years since.

He started selling his work on the streets and then got asked if he wanted to sell them in a gallery.

‘I would have been happy to give them away,’ he told me, ‘but the money’s helpful.’

He asked me to tell him about me.

‘I lived in London all my life,’ I said. ‘I’d had a couple of jobs but nothing good. Then I ended up in prison. I’ve been out a couple of months and I’m down visiting family for the week.’ I told him how much I had needed a break from them because they wouldn’t leave me alone.  ‘I just went for a walk to clear my head,’ I drank the last of the tea.

He went back to work, and I went to buy some food. He’d gone out by the time I got back so I left it outside in a box for him with a note telling him I had to go and get back to the family because they would be wondering where I was. As I was about to leave, he returned. I shook his hand, said thank you and left.

I went back to the Thames and walked home. My family were all in the front garden and asked me what I had been doing all day. I told them about the mud painting and how much I had enjoyed it.

We all went indoors and had dinner. I knew I had to leave and I walked to the train station. It’s a boring journey getting back but I like doing it because it means I am going back to my head; I relax and put on the headphones. That was a day I would never forget. Who knew what you could do with mud.

 

Dave