‘Once I began, I couldn’t stop’: what’s it like to become an artist later in life?
There is a particular stereotype of creative genius: that of the youthful prodigy of irrepressible talent. Unlike a surgeon or a politician, the artist is not expected to accumulate years of knowledge and experience before assuming their role. You could say that one does not become but rather is born an artist.
Yet history offers plenty of counter-examples. The French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau worked as a toll-and-tax collector until picking up a paintbrush in his 40s. Alfred Wallis, a West Country fisher, started painting and drawing in his 70s. After his wife’s death, he began making his pictures of life on the coast and sea, mostly on scraps of cardboard, “for company”, he once said. American folk artist Grandma Moses, a domestic housekeeper turned farmer, began producing her New England landscapes at 76; her work grew so popular that in December 1953, at the age of 93, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
These late bloomers are often described as “naive” or “outsider” artists, somewhat patronising terms used to describe people with no formal artistic training. But they have also been recognised for the originality and virtuosity of their work, showing that, at whatever stage, new beginnings are always possible.
Of course, depending on a person’s circumstances, there will be different routes to starting again and making it – that is, earning money and recognition – as an artist. London-based Libby Heaney, whose exhibition Heartbreak and Magic opens at Somerset House in February, tells me that art was her favourite subject in school. “But because I come from a very working-class background, my teachers and family advised me to study something they considered ‘more serious’ at university instead, which was theoretical physics with German,” she says. Heaney quickly doubted her choice but didn’t have the funds to start over. So she resolved to specialise in quantum physics, undertaking a PhD followed by five years of post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. She kept making art in her spare time, although she considered it more as a personally enriching “hobby” – like “yoga or clubbing”.
As a quantum physicist, Heaney received prizes, and published some 20 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. But throughout this period she was also “gradually saving up enough money to go back to university to study art”.
In 2015, in her early 30s, Heaney graduated with an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martins in London. Two years later she had her first solo show at a gallery in Aarhus in Denmark. In her artistic practice now, Heaney draws on tools and concepts from her scientific research. For instance, she uses her own quantum computing code to alter and animate digital images of her watercolour paintings. The years Heaney spent in science while saving up for art school, then, were by no means a waste.
But Heaney is wary of presenting her story as a template for success. “The ability for working-class people to take risks – whether that’s by going to art school [where an aspiring artist crucially discovers peers and mentors and develops their credentials], or making work that is less commercial – is very much reduced compared to people with existing financial support like family wealth,” she says. “How feasible is it for other working-class people to take a roundabout route into the arts to mitigate the financial risks?”
Others take a more spontaneous approach. Arjan de Nooy, who lives and works in The Hague, is a photographer and award-winning book-maker; this year saw the publication of his photobook Photology. At university in the 1980s, de Nooy studied chemistry and art history. He was already dabbling in photography but ended up graduating with an MSc and then a PhD in chemistry. While he was working in a patent office, his interest in art-making grew. He was in his late 30s when he made an impulsive decision to enrol on the photography programme at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2004. “This was a decision made more out of curiosity than a conscious plan to become a professional artist,” he tells me. “I was mainly interested in meeting like-minded people, as I had little knowledge of the ‘art world’.”
De Nooy graduated in 2009. Like Heaney, he has found that his scientific training has enriched his approach to art-making. “I have always felt that there is not much difference in the way I worked as an organic chemist versus as a photographer,” he says. “I tend to combine existing information to obtain new information.” In his books and exhibitions, he makes extensive use of “found photography” – he has accumulated a vast collection of historical photographs – and collage.
Now, a decade and a half into his photographic career, De Nooy agrees with Heaney that a lack of financial resources is the biggest block for most artists – and not only in terms of having funds for university. “I know very few artists, if any, who can live solely off their own work,” he says. In order to bolster your career, he says, you need a combination of skill and serendipity – meeting the right people at the right time, and winning prizes or receiving grants. “If you’re able to write a solid grant application, that is also an advantage,” he adds.
But sometimes the barriers are psychological as much as they are practical. Making creative work, and showing it to the world, is an intensely vulnerable experience. Helen Downie, an artist in London, produces work under the name Unskilled Worker – a reference to her lack of formal artistic training – and didn’t complete her first painting as an adult until she was 48. “As a child I knew I was an artist, but somehow along the way I had forgotten,” she says. At one stage she considered enrolling at the University of the Creative Arts in Epsom, but didn’t go through with it. “My life became quite chaotic and it wasn’t until I was 48 that suddenly things calmed down and there was space in my mind to begin.”
In 2013, Downie uploaded an image of the first painting she made as an adult – a portrait of a dark-haired woman, with big red lips and almondshaped eyes – on to Instagram, on the suggestion of a friend of her son’s. Then, she says, “once I began, I couldn’t stop”. Her follower count grew and, after two years, her expressive, boldly coloured portraits caught the attention of the fashion and art world. She was hired by fashion photographer Nick Knight to produce illustrations for his website. Commissions for the likes of Gucci and Vogue, as well as art museum and gallery exhibitions, have flowed in ever since.
“There will always be many reasons not to begin,” Downie says. “Conditions aren’t perfect: no space; no time; I’ve left it too late. Underpinning all of them is fear.” But once you get going with the work, she has found, it’s much easier to keep up creative momentum. Another strategy is to not take yourself too seriously – lest the fear comes back. “I trick myself into not giving what I’m doing any weight. I say to myself: ‘I’m just playing, I’m just playing.’”
It is notable that each of these artists knew what they wanted to do when they were young. In order to reroute in adulthood, they had to find a way to drop the grownup act, whether by going back to school or simply allowing themselves to play without inhibitions. This is perhaps good advice for all of us. Artist Grayson Perry, who invited everyone in the country to try their hand at art-making via his lockdown hit TV series Grayson’s Art Club, concurs. “The biggest blocks to being creative are a fear of getting it wrong and an inability to trust one’s intuition,” he tells me. “Just go for it and keep going – nobody does a masterpiece on the first attempt.”
I come from a very working-class background, and my teachers and family advised me to study something more serious
Libby Heaney