John Paul Raine

I was born January 27 1948, so now I am 62 years of age. I'm a painter who does other work to make a living, but being an artist is a constant in my life.

It seems as if I never wanted to be anything other than an artist, but my ability to draw developed very suddenly, around the age 14. Being a Grammar School boy it was inevitable that I would go on to art school, but I never really thought that art belonged in educational establishments; it seemed a very personal endeavour to me. I attended Leeds School of Art for one year in 1967 but soon dropped out and became a wild Bohemian for a while.

Not having done much actual painting during this Bohemian period, I decided eventually to settle down to a more productive life. I learned to meditate (TM) in 1979, and then used my skills to earn a living as a freelance illustrator, doing artwork for educational publications and for the oil industry in Aberdeen.

In 1985 I was able to return to my true vocation as an artist and enrolled at Gray's School of Art, aged 37. By this time I could see the value of having some time in an educational establishment, away from the stresses and demands of the outer world. After graduating I worked for two years as a lecturer in painting and drawing at Aberdeen College, and then for one year on an ad hoc basis teaching life drawing at Gray's. For two years after that I was a full time painter

An artist can have a very solitary working life, and it became clear eventually that I needed to expand my horizons. In 1995 I took a job as a support worker in a hostel for young people with mental illnesses who were trying to establish themselves in their own homes, and entered one of the most valuable and instructive periods of my life. During this time I continued to paint and to exhibit in various galleries in Scotland, developing my reputation as a realist painter specialising in still life.

The modern art market is based on selling pictures as investments, and quantity of works is a deciding factor in whether an artist will be commercially successful or not. From the start I decided that rather than produce hundreds of sketches I would concentrate on well worked individual pieces, which would sell on their intrinsic worth rather than on their potential as investments. It soon became clear that I would always need a job in order to make a living if I worked in this way. However, jobs in the real world, unrelated to art, have provided a balance in what might otherwise have been a rather obsessive, onesided life as a full time artist.

Since 2008 I have been teaching art at Roervig Folk High School in Denmark (www.rfh.dk), where I work for eight months of the year, returning to Scotland for the summer. The curriculum at Roervig includes art, ayurveda, jyotish, music and film making. Students also have the opportunity to learn Transcendental Meditation. In the settled and progressive atmosphere of the school I find that my painting is developing in a very inspiring way.