Nick Willing

What she discovered was that if I laughed, it was very painful because I had stitches in my tummy.

So she'd make me laugh all the time.

Stop it.

The weird pleasure she got from seeing me in agony but laughing, she thought it was so extraordinary.

So we drew for two weeks together.

And what would happen when you drew with her is that you would use drawing to make fun of people that you didn't like, to find out things about yourself differently.

that you didn't like to draw all sorts of complicated things but those were your secrets you see you're sort of drawing the thing to bring it out to understand it better but you keep it a secret so nobody knows that you're this horrible person

That's how I understood it as a child.

And then later when I went to boarding school, they put me in a boarding school in England.

I don't know if you know any English people, but they're horrible.

And there were a lot of English boys there.

Even though I grew up in England.

You dodged a bullet.

And I was bullied for being a Portuguese boy.

It was very ugly as well and a runt and I had braces and horrible things.

So I was very badly bullied and I'd call home and mum would say, well, draw a picture of them and send them to me.

And then I'd send them to her and she would draw things on them and send them back.

And then she said, now draw them getting, you're killing them.

You're bullied.

So I draw that.