Philippa Perry

This is my mum.

This is my cat, you know, circles with sticks out of them.

And I don't know when it happens, seven, eight, nine.

Sometimes they just think, no, that's crap.

That's no good.

Yeah, it's no good.

And they stop drawing and then they never get any better.

But if they carry on drawing, you draw like a grown up in the end.

That feels very important.

I mean, especially as I can build things out of slabs in pottery so I can make some great looking things in pottery.

And here I am doing a new technique and I just want to go, I know how to make this look better if I do my old way.

But that's not the point.

I'm learning a new technical skill.

And I think that if you were one of those children who were told, and no, you're not because you're a good artist, but you're told don't bother drawing, you haven't got any talent and you've stopped, you can start again whatever age you are.

Yeah.

But I think also... You can start at 80, like Grandma Moses.

stays with you later in life what's the way to start overriding that when you know you've got this label that you you don't like about yourself yeah like mine was show off right so it was very difficult for me I think to do anything in public in fact I didn't publish my first book until I was 50 you know I worked as a psychotherapist behind closed doors and nobody knew what I got up to

And I am a show-off.

I don't deny it.

And so the show-off part of me was like, why can't I show anybody what I do?