A Tantalising 3 Minutes

What makes someone who they are is in part due to their genes and how they were brought up and what influenced them in their lives, and still does.

I know what you're all thinking, how on earth did this guy move from Graphic Design into Investment Banking, easy I have a few qualities others seem to have missed or indeed forgotten they have or are not allowed to use. I am extremely creative, forceful, in a polite manner! I have guts and I hate, detest the word NO! My environment at an early age as a young boy was to a degree to mold me into the kind of man that would indeed take on the world, I was born and grew up on the very hard streets of the east end of London, I had a fight practically every day of the week. I lived in the Docklands and it was not a place for the timid, or shy, you had to stand up for yourself no matter how young! It's odd but the docklands of London back then and even today has an uncanny resemblance to LA and that might explain my Love for LA!

My works, what I still produce today, are a concoction of my talent, my upbringing and my style is part of what turns me on and what molded me in those early days in London.

I was always talented even before I could speak I was drawing and this talent was to pay off as I got excepted in to a great London College to study Graphic Design, and that wasn't enough I graduated with winning a Design and Art Directions Award, the world famous PENCIL beating some 3400 undergraduates, the men that judged me were to be none other than Milton Glaser, the designer who created I LOVE NY logo and the famous Paul Arden, the Top SAATCHI and SAATCHI man. I worked professionally in Graphic Design in a London Consultancy for a few years but then I decided to follow my brother into Investment banking, and venturing into such a selected profession back then was no easy feat by a long shot! London back in the 1980s was not the London that stands before me today, yes its still London, but the financial district has changed dramatically and I for one am very fortunate indeed to have enjoyed some of the best days in Investment Banking, a time where chance, risk, to the Hell With It were embraced, not now, sad.

LONDON in the 1980s was another world as was WALL Street I should imagine, it was about character and money, yes, but nothing like any film, not at all it was far, far more real. Lunch was a true event, to entertain and by God, they were long lunches, today people sit at their desk with a sandwich for fear of leaving their desk. London was magical, jobs were all over the place, the word insecurity was not even invented, or to that matter thought of and it was a perfect time for a young man like me to venture into this glorious club. I was good enough, I do not use the word lucky, luck is self-made, someone said you have to be at the right place at the right time, the moral here then by default, is to be in the right place more often!!! I started at a great Jobber, Market Maker called Smith New Court who gave me the chance to show how good I was and I delivered, and I'm still delivering. Smiths became Merrill Lynch, then on to Bank of America. I got to experience all the departments and then finally on to a Trading floor, at a great pivotal time in London and meeting some interesting and very influential people at a young age. It was also at Smiths that I was given the chance to design for the company's research department, I was now designing the companies research covers, they had originality, they had an impact on the clients' desk and by God, they impressed, and they still do.

My works, what I still produce today, are a concoction of my talent, my upbringing and my style is part of what turns me on and what molded me in those early days in London. looking back at what made me in London in those great days is like saying this, there was only on Woodstock for all the would-be Hippies, and I for one love Crosby, Stills and Nash, and for all those would be Gorden Gekkos out there the was only one City of London and that was back in the 1980s, and those wild party days of care attitude are not coming back, at least not to the masses! Those days made me, they gave me understanding to this rather privileged world back then, it opened up another class, we English are hideous at that even today, but I was always the better, it taught me finance and investment banking and what made this secret world run, and now I know. My talent was to be taken to Germany for 11 years in Frankfurt to work for an Investment Bank and where The Tiny Studio was created, but that's another story. Success all boils down to two things, not one's social class, not money, it comes down to having talent and confidence, nothing more, nothing less, these two qualities will get you to the moon, and probably beyond! So get out on that bloody stage and act, the world is waiting for a great performance from you and they have paid for frontline seats to see you so you had better impress!

#The Tiny Studio # # Abstract Art #Art and Design #Electronic Art #