Blog Post 2

Because of the drugs and the problems with people harming themselves, my parents asked the council to move us. One of the places we were offered was Grenfell Tower near Ladbroke Grove. Many people will know about the tragedy that happened there, so luckily we didn’t end up living there. Instead, we moved to a council estate in Hammersmith, which had its own troubles but was a big improvement from where we were and what we were originally offered.

I remember my dad telling me a story about one place we visited to live and he said the front door was broken in half and you could smell the flat from the street outside, another lucky escape.

I started school, and instantly I knew it was a place where I felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t just because of what I later found out was dyslexia, but also because of excessive worrying and intrusive thoughts, which eventually led to me discovering I had OCD. But, just like my dyslexia, that diagnosis came later. I’ll go into the OCD perhaps later in another post. I’ve always felt different and with a feeling of walking against traffic, not wanting to do what everyone else seemed happy to do, living a hole world in my head, drifting in to thoughts that totally leave me from the world around me. I never thought of myself as a day dreamer but my children have made me aware of it, that I go off somewhere, in to my mind where I’m joined by this anxious monkey banging his symbols relentlessly.

When it came to my dyslexia, it’s fair to say I was treated very badly in school and not just by the students, which in some ways is more understandable looking back, as kids don’t know any better, but more unforgivably also and more often by the teachers. I experienced isolation and humiliation throughout my school life. I wasn’t allowed to take part in certain lessons. I’d be asked to “sit over there and just draw or something” instead of taking part, or on the other hand, made to stand up and read aloud to which of course I couldn’t do and it was well known I couldn’t by everyone, but for some reason they took joy out of deliberately humiliating me. The school was aware that I may have had dyslexia but chose to ignore it, as it would’ve been costly and they would’ve had to make provisions for me, not to mention none of the teachers I had seem to want to be there or to have any interest in education. Even after leaving school, I was still unable at that stage to write my name fully, or do simple things like the alphabet, reading, or even naming the months of the year. The only exam I managed to pass was Art. School was absolutely awful, full of bullying and very troubled people, students and teachers alike.

After leaving school, I began looking into the possibility that I was dyslexic, with the support of my parents. Eventually, I found someone who completely transformed my life, Patricia Stringer, an adult dyslexia educational psychologist. She was able to teach me, in a matter of hours, more than I had learned throughout my entire schooling. I remember in the first session she praised me so much for not giving up, for persevering. Outside of my parents and family, I don’t think I had ever received any praise or compliment before. I was truly taken back, and even nearly 30 years later I can picture it like it was yesterday. It was the first time anyone had said anything genuinely positive to me, again as I said other than my family.

One of the great things about being dyslexic for me is that I’ve develop an incredibly thick skin when it comes to failure. You grow up used to being the person who “never gets it right.” And in the art world, you have to have this resilience, it has made me a person who never gives up. Another thing I’ve found is that my dyslexia has made me very empathetic towards anyone who struggles, anyone who doesn’t immediately understand something or finds learning difficult in any way. I worked with Patricia Stringer for over two years, developing the skills I missed out on at school and building my confidence. I had a goal to prove everybody wrong who had doubted me, and that goal was to go to university. This was obviously a huge goal for someone who was still unable to write their own name and I saw this as the stamp of showing everyone I weren’t an idiot. (not true going to university dose not mean your not an idiot, I have ment of very well educated idiots throughout my life) I did eventually go to university, though I didn’t end up studying art. I’ll go into that maybe in a later post.

Based on what I know now, I guess we would’ve been considered poor. We lived in a poor area and we didn’t have much money, but I never felt poor as a kid. I was so well looked after by my mum and dad and so loved. Being poor to me were the kids at school who were not washed, who came in smelling of piss because they had probably spent the night in a wet bed, and just that very specific smell of someone who isn’t being looked after. That was poor in my mind: being emotionally and physically neglected. Kids who would sidle up to my mum just to get a hug,

We were looked after, our hair was brushed, we were clean and washed and had clean clothes on. My mum still tells stories about how we didn’t have any money, but I have no recollection of that. I just remember being loved more than anything. My mum and dad put us first over everything.

Now days It makes me laugh when I think about my own kids now. They have three or four pairs of waterproof trousers and jackets: a pair for when it snows, a pair for when it’s hot and raining, a pair for when it’s cold and raining. Snow shoes, hats, gloves, the lot, hundreds of things I can’t keep up with it. I distinctly remember being about six or so, and my dad picking me up from school when it was raining, and he would just put me in a bin bag to keep me dry. We never had an special clothes for weather, of course, that would’ve been on a day when he didn’t pick me up in the JCB.

My dad worked as a tarmacker, mending the roads, so he had a JCB that he used to drive. He’d let me drive it as a kid down the road on the way to and from school, sitting on his knee. My kids would love to do that now. I took it as normal, just chucking my school bag in the front of the digger and off we went through the middle of London. My dad would park on the council estate, and the other kids would sometimes break into the JCB just to flick the lights on or something. But they only ever did it once, my dad was not someone to be messing around with.

Why talk about this? Why am I bothering writing this down? That’s what’s been going through my head. I suppose one things that goes through my head is that the art world can be very snobby. I have many times felt like an impostor and someone on the outside, someone who doesn’t know enough or is just pretending, and that anytime now someone will work it out, work out that I shouldn’t be here and I’m just a fraud. I suppose writing this may share that you can come from anywhere or anything and still follow an unconventional dream or goal. I’m not saying I did anything great, coming from the situations I’ve come from and the place that I’ve grown up in, or that I have achieved anything within my chosen field to shout about, but I think people have this idea that you must’ve been given a lot of opportunities or you that you have come from a very fortunate background, and that’s simply not the case.

I’m fully aware that these parts of my life have affected the way that I work, in particular the dyslexia has given me a life long insecurity. I constantly have this sense of being trapped in a mindset of wanting to prove that I’m not an idiot. The effect of this in my own work means that there is a tendency that the end product, the piece of work that I make, has a level of technical proof in it, a flex of my artistic muscle, on a level to say that I am good at this. I am a figurative artist and the aim is for it to look like something, but the battle is between making something that looks good with a technical ability and the side that just wants to be free and wants to work purely on emotional response to what I’m doing, leading me into the more abstract possibly at least on a level where the process is the important part and not just a result. Being a self taught artist is plays into as well. I’m constantly thinking that not doing this right and everyone can see it. Im just made this up, the way that I’m doing is technically not right, and it probably isn’t, but again we come full circle on this feeling of being observed found out not getting it right being the fool. And the truth is I’m not very technical when it comes to my art, I don’t know the ins and out of the paper I use or the pigments I might be using and so on, and I have to say it’s a side that doesn’t really interest me, I know very little of art history and all the artists that have come before me I can never remember anybody’s name. I do know the stuff that moves me when I see it, but I still have found a way of working that makes me want to get up every day and keep trying, giving me such a purpose in life outside of family life which always comes first.

Artist to look at is: Olle Skagerfors. one of my favorite.

Song: Joan Baez. Forever Young. Love this version.

Poem: Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith.

Book: Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley.

Film: Barnacle Bill.

Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) Annual Exhibition 2025.

I’m thrilled to share that I have won a prize at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) Annual Exhibition 2025. 

My painting (untitled) was awarded the Winsor & Newton Non-member Award I'm extremely grateful. 

The exhibition runs from 27 November to 13 December 2025, daily from 10:00 to 5:00 pm, at the galleries of Mall Galleries in London. 

I’m proud to be part of this show, seeing my work among over 300 paintings.

Thank you to the ROI, Mall Galleries and everyone who has supported me on this journey.

Robert O’Brien

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.