In the beginning there was L.F.C.
One of the first commissions I did as a professional artist was for Liverpool Football Club. It was 1992 I had a new business and thought how can we make a splash. I had been doing community artwork for ages, but needed some paid work. I wrote a letter to Liverpool Football Club, not only being a fan of the club, I'd heard about all the fuss over the new stand, so I wrote in offering my services. We got a meeting, there I was sitting round the directors table selling our ideas. It was to do murals for the new stand, with all their lovely rooms, championship, Europe, Shankley and Paisley. To cut a long story short I lost my mind, sorry went all Spandau Ballet then, no seriously well I offered a total of 21 murals for the rooms based on all this greatness, and basically was left dangling for ages. Then they gave me 6 weeks to produce 21 murals all roughly 6ft by 4ft in acrylic. I chose to do them in Black white and red, and thank God I did. The pressure was immense, frightening, and to top it all in my co-operative I was the only professional artist. Thankfully they liked them except for one director who said he thought he looked like Hitler in the painting. Well he did! Not my fault.
Here are some examples of the work below. All taken with an old camera then scanned in. The most famous one of Shankley is at the bottom in the newspaper article.
Suzy Painting Mural
Here I am painting the one down below, just to let you see the scale. No I'm not a midget I'm 5ft 10. |
European Room
This is kissing the cup as it's called! After another great win in the 70's. The map is just to show our great but tiny country. |
Shankley Room
Murals in Shankley Room in situ. |
Champions Room
Three greats, Shanks, Paisley and Fagin |
We even made the news a little
That's me at the back with my business adviser at the time Ged McKenna at the front. He turned out to be a divi in the end too. He got me a job a L.I.P.A when he started there. He had a habit of using people to get what he wanted. He made you think you were the bees knees. Dramatically immature and childish. I did so much for him, and when I got ill with running the art gallery, working full time, bringing up two children with a useless partner and so on he distanced himself from me. No support nothing. He had a beautiful wife who he used too. I sincerely hope she found someone else. He had another woman Debbie who replaced me when I was ill. Anyway I'm sure life taught him a lesson or two. The other two headline grabbing talent-less personas, are smiled out. Yup I have no time for them. I worked I painted I earned lots of money. They did nothing except take that hard earned money and spent it on their greedy selves. I got my hair extended. Woohoo out of all that money. So did they!? Weird you bet they were. Did you hear that? I got my hair extended and then they copied me. We looked like the hair bear bunch. Ridiculous. Pity they never ran off together. You know who you are, and you reap what you sow. I have no hatred only pity that they have to bathe in others little bits of glory. Never mind. However it was on and upward to many happy times.Plus to quote the wonderful Dan Ackroyd in the marvelous and very funny Ghostbusters 2 "YEAH BUT WHAT A RIDE!"
