New Starts

I’ve decided to start a blog. I’ve had one before, years and years ago, where I shared other artists’ work, but never anything about me or my own work. Writing about my experiences with art, being an artist, and life… well, let me start by saying I have severe dyslexia, so doing something like this is very much outside my comfort zone. This subject has been a big part of my life, and I will talk about it more later.

Technology has moved on a lot since I was a kid, and it has made my life a thousand times easier. I’m actually speaking this into my phone, and then I’ll use one of those AI apps to help with punctuation, spelling, and things like that. I hope you’ll understand that I know nothing about writing or about writing a blog, and I’ve never written about my work or myself before. So please be understanding and forgiving — it will all be a bit rough around the edges.

I guess the first post can be about me. I’ll probably reference things from when I was younger throughout these posts, but let’s start with a small introduction.

My name is Robert O’Brien. I’m 47 years old and I live in Sweden. I have two children and a wife. I’m originally from London — I was born there — but both my parents are Irish. Me, my brother, and my sister were the first in our family to be born outside of Ireland. This theme in my life, of having an Irish family but being born in England, has always created an inner conflict around identity. I’ve never truly felt like I belong. I don’t feel Irish, but I’ve never truly felt English either. And now that I live in Sweden, I find my identity even stranger.

It’s interesting how you can go through your whole life identifying with one culture or nationality, and then let’s say, hypothetically, you were told one day that you were adopted, and your birth parents were from somewhere completely different. That would completely throw your understanding of who you are and your feelings of belonging. I’ve never tackled identity directly in my artwork, but it has always been a massive part of my life: trying to discover who I am, what my identity actually is, what my nationality really means, and why it matters at all. It’s not like I have a particular interest in where others come from — not in an ignorant way that I’m not interested in them, but just in a way that I don’t put any significance on it. People are always very quick to tell me what I am based on almost nothing. “Oh, you’re English, you were born in England.” Or, “Oh, you’re Irish, your mum and dad are Irish.” But I’ve never felt fully comfortable with either.

So, there we are.

As I said, I was born in London. I grew up on a council estate called the World’s End Estate for the first few years of my life in Chelsea, just off the King’s Road. If you don’t know it, hearing “Chelsea” and “King’s Road” might sound glamorous — Chelsea is a very fancy part of London. But the World’s End Estate couldn’t be further from posh or fancy. Anyone who knows the World’s End Estate knows it’s a shithole… or at least it was in the 70s and 80s when I lived there. It’s probably posh million-pound flats now.

I lived right at the top, on the 20th floor of one of the tower blocks: Greaves Tower. There were lots of problems with drugs like heroin and glue sniffing, and because we lived at the top, people would come up and climb onto the roof above our flat. It was also a place for “jumpers” — people killing themselves. I have a strong memory of the piss-smelling lifts breaking and having to climb the stairs, my mum with us and bags of shopping. All of the towers were named after artists who were inspired by the Thames. Coincidentally, me being an artist, Walter Greaves was one of them — and that’s the block I lived in. Me, my mum and dad, my older brother and sister… and our cat Tiddles.

Writing like this is a big jump for me and doesn’t come naturally. I’m a very private person. I think that can be seen in my work, as I have painted a lot of people of whom I have no idea who they are, working from old photographs that I’ve collected over the years. I’m trying to bring the theme more towards myself now, and over the years I’ve started a series of self-portraits. In social situations I always try to avoid talking about myself, and I’ve never been great at explaining my work. But I’m at a point in my life where I want to take my work further than I ever have before, and I feel that letting people in might help give a better understanding of me and my art. I also think it might be freeing to get this internal monologue out of my head and onto paper.

I’ve always done my painting alongside a normal job, which I’ll perhaps go into more detail about later. But I’m at a point where I would like painting to become my full-time job. Even as I write this, my mind drifts to a place where that has already happened, and it fills me with excitement. I will try to be as honest as I can in this blog — otherwise there’s no point in doing it.

I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m jumping around too much. In a strange way, I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a blog myself, so I’ve no idea how one is supposed to sound or be formatted. When I run this through AI for spelling and grammar, it will probably ask me if I want it to “make this sound better, more like an adult with a clue has written it,” but I think I’ll say no. It will just have to stay as it is, for the two people who might read it.

So let’s jump to the present for a bit. As part of pushing myself with my work this year, I decided to enter more competitions. The first one I entered this year, I was lucky enough to get into: the ROI 2025 — Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition. If I’m honest, I didn’t know much about it and had never seen it, so I was surprised to see how varied it was, and even more surprised that I got in. I won’t be able to see it myself, but I hope to see photos of it.

To end this post, I thought it might be nice to mention what I’m reading or listening to, or what art I’ve been looking at.

Books

For the first time, I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (audiobook), and I have to say I think it’s the greatest book I’ve ever read. I loved it so much that after finishing it I went on to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and now I’ve jumped straight back to The Count of Monte Cristo to read it again.

Music

I have Tom Odell on repeat at the moment — in particular the song “Black Friday.” I recently heard him say in an interview that he would never say in person the things he writes in his songs, and I guess this blog is similar for me. I don’t speak about these things openly, but maybe this is a great place for me to do it.

Artists

Katja Lang — I’m lucky enough to have a number of her prints. I think the way she captures solitude is absolutely breathtaking. Well worth checking out if you don’t already know her.