I'm a retired graphic designer, musician, fashion retailer. I am now an artist with Parkinson's. I live in West Cork, Ireland and I paint guitars. I’m not even a very good guitarist, I’m a piano man but they’d be a right pain in the face to paint and hang on the wall.
I was born in England to an Irish mother and an English father, I have a German surname, I got my education in England but I lived and worked all my adult life in Ireland, I fell in love with an Irish girl, my siblings are English, my children are Irish, my grandchildren are black and white . . . (which is wholly appropriate as I am a Newcastle United supporter) . . . they are also English and Irish . . . so I tend to think of myself as neither (or both) . . . it just gets too complicated . . . I don’t have an identity crisis, I just prefer to think of myself as an ‘Ishman’ . . . that’s a mixture of everything I like about the different cultures on these islands.
You will, of course, be able to buy an ‘Ish’ T-shirt and other assorted tat (along with guitars, of course), on my website, www.juddotheguitartist.com, which will be open very soon. If you visit it, you’ll find I’ve gone ‘full Lidl’ on my life in a very undignified attempt to make a few bob for The Michael J Fox Foundation.(There will be a link on my site to my fundraising page on the MJFF site). I find this Great GGG very interesting, it’s not a case of “so, what have you been up to for the last few months?” Now that we’re all getting to the pointy end of this life, it’s more a case of “did you have a good life, will you go out a happy soul”.
For myself, I feel blessed, (I’m now trying to avoid the babysitting of five of our six grandchildren), but that’s all part of the fun isn’t it. I have had a career as a designer, a musician, a fashion retailer and an artist. Marianne and myself worked our butts off to make a good business and, mostly, we succeeded. We travelled a lot for the buying and when COVID came along it was the first time either of us had taken any extended ‘down’ time and we loved it. I always wanted to learn how to record using a DAW like Logic and I came up with a couple of unusual tunes, one of which is an opera aria - you’ll be able to hear it on the website . . . But give me a little time. Unfortunately, Parkinson’s also came along in lockdown . . . But that’s another story . . . I wish you all a very happy time for however much time you have and I look forward to catching up with you all. Peace and love from us all in West Cork, Ireland.
