It started with comics – Jack Kirby, Steranko, Buscema, Windsor-Smith….

Trying to draw inspired by their strange anatomy.

In my fifth form year we had a trip to Auckland to see a Vincent Van Gogh exhibition.

At high school I was unable to take Art as a subject ‘til my sixth form year when I ditched all my other subjects except Tech Drawing and English.

My first job was as a draughtsman at Waikato University. We produced maps, graphs and graphics.

At a certain point I discovered Degas and I realised something – I wanted to paint.

It was always oil or pastel and always people.

Copying the masters and trying to find a place or voice or something.

It’s not verbal and very private

“You’re born alone, you die alone and you paint alone”.

People bought them.

When I moved to Wellington in 1980 I started having exhibitions at cafes and small galleries.

With the oils I found a way of painting with a palette knife that was quite unique.

I painted a huge canvas, the size of a car and had it hanging in the warehouse I lived in at the time. A friend brought a lovely English woman called Arabella around to meet me. She stood in front of that painting and wept – I’ll never forget that. That’s why I paint.

In the nineties I started using egg tempera and did a series of beachscapes then stopped painting for ten years to concentrate on carving the Strange Angels.

I started again from scratch a couple of years ago.

I find it very difficult to talk about the work without sounding like a prat.

Hopefully it speaks for itself.

I made Arabella cry and that’s good enough for me.

The Ghost of Electricity – War Stories by Jon McLeary is a new initiative at Off The Tracks, a series of stories and reflections from painter, writer and musician Jon McLeary

To read any of the first 21 pieces in the Ghost of Electricity/War Stories series click here