Sam Cooke Painting

When I was 16 I went to a college in Mansfield, England with a coach with ties to american college basketball scholarships in the USA. This led me to genuinely believe if I was good enough I could pursue it seriously. In an under 21 league as a skinny vegetarian I was the top scorer on the team after the first 3 games averaging 21 points a game. In the fourth game I got taken out on the fast break after stealing the ball and in my fall I broke my wrist. My left wrist would never be the same. In the proceeding medical care I had a local anaesthetic as they corrected the weird position my wrist had detached to. In the height of pain as they fiddled with my wrist I had this bizarre vision of being an impressionist in Paris in the 1920s called Gerard Pardot. It was incredibly alive and real. Afterwards I was confused by it but also found it intriguing. I hadn't painted yet. A few years later I painted for fun and midway through I got into this working trance and had further images of this life by this 'Gerard Pardot'. I have since researched past lives and if this person was real and the results are inconclusive. I do find as art was something I wasn't interested in has overcome me though since I had this experience. My persona has shifted and I spent time in rural Spain painting and learning my own style in secluded wilderness to try and understand if this was real or a combination of imagination and medication. To this day my art is both an expression of who I've become, but also an attempt to reach out to Gerard Pardot. You'll find a lot of my artworks are creating images and atmospheres where you seem to feel you're expecting someone to appear within it, or the characters in the paintings are awaiting something.