staphan

I was born in 1965 at Hillingdon hospital. My mother was the scion of a rich family from Jaffa in Palestine. My father, who was from Cyprus, was poor and uneducated. My earliest memory is of my father playing Backgammon in our Armenian Church in Kensington. Other than men with big beards and pointy hats, this is all I remember. I literally acquired a taste for art at an early age, when, during a lesson in creating blow paintings, I sucked instead. It was not a propitious start.

I first studied at Hertforshire College of Art and Design and thereafter at St Martins. It was at St Martin’s that I had a brief taste of fame when I was selected to paint at a public exhibition in Senigalli. The event was hosted by the late Mario Giacomelli and broadcast on Italian television. I was certain that fame and great riches awaited. Unfortunately fate intervened and in my third year at St Martins my mother died and my father’s greengrocer went bankrupt. I applied for a job selling watches, which continues to keep me in food, wine, paint and canvasses.