Who made you creative?

What my parents - inadvertently - taught me about creativity

I was poking my phone the other day, drawn to Instagram like a moth to flame-coloured cashmere, and experienced a jolt of envy. I mean, of course I did. Instagram is a discontent engine pumping out lacks that I didn’t realise I had. Didn’t have. Whatever. This wasn’t holiday envy, or why-haven’t-I-got-a-publishing-deal envy (hint: I haven’t written a book or even pitched one) this time it was someone else’s childhood that I was coveting.

TV’s Claudia Winkleman, she of the sloe-black fringe and excellent trouser suits, was on the National Gallery’s insta account talking about where her love of art began. It was, she said, all thanks to her “brilliant dad”. Her father took her to the gallery every weekend and there was just one rule: “we were only allowed to look at one painting. We would stand in front of a painting and really talk about it, sometimes for 40 minutes, sometimes for half an hour. The brilliance of that one painting [rule] is it leaves you wanting more.”

I didn’t clock initially why she was on there - a film called My National Gallery, created to celebrate the institution’s bicentenary - I just went straight to “WAAAAAHHHH why didn’t I get taken round London art galleries when I was a nipper and taught about culture in a cannily bitesize way? AND her mum is the editor and author Eve Pollard, giving her an inside track, as well as excellent genes, with which to enter the world of journalism.” My inner self-pitying brat lives very close to the surface, what can I say (other than sorry)?

For the record, I did absolutely tons of lovely things as a youngling. I had piano lessons (a bit too much like maths, but good to find that out early) and holidays abroad. I went to Disney World, I didn’t get any brothers or sisters until I was 19 and actually wanted some and I was endlessly encouraged to read. My dad took me though The Famous Five every night, doing all the different voices, including woofs, reading from my mum’s childhood hardbacks. We had a dog that I - obvs - wanted to call Timmy, and I got my way. And despite some definitely chewier moments, I really have no business whimpering about Claudia Winkleman.

This Timmy didn’t fight crime, just postmen and anyone else who knocked on the door

My parents - so long divorced that it’s surreal to think about them in the same room for longer than seven minutes, let alone being married - don’t think of themselves as creative. It’s about the only thing they’ve agreed on in 30 years. But actually I think that in their own ways they are. And their combined, stealth creativity has benefitted me perhaps as much as a weekly diplomatic visit to The Ambassadors, half an hour gazing at a bunch of Sunflowers and nipping to The Toilet of Venus. 

With my dad, his gift is creative thinking. He is an ideas machine, a problem solver and has a talent for connecting people. Sometimes the machine goes into overdrive, leaving exhausted friends and family twitching in its wake. There are times when the vibes might be a little more Creative Dictator than Creative Director, but artists are gonna artist, even if their material is mental rather than physical. I love the way his brain leaps, his enthusiasm for new things and his stamina, even if I might need a quiet moment and a biscuit to digest his latest scheme. He also introduced me to Monet, especially the hazy, late-era waterlilies, and is currently very into Keith Haring’s designs, specifically on reasonably priced clothing, but definitely not involving any of the artist’s more explicit motifs.

Keith Haring’s estate has been collaborating with a LOT of different clothing brands of late, including H&M

Both my parents take delight in words and wordplay, collecting puns and phrases in particular, although it also manifests differently in each. Dad gathers stories, always thrilled to add more to his collection, while Mum has a talent for… fiction... mischief… telling absolutely whopping fibs when I ask her something straight, leaving me to realise I’ve been had only when I spot the gleam in her eye. I once brought home a book that was a kind of DIY memoir with the thought she might fill it in. By the second page she’d invented a new middle name and was gearing up for more. She is also the mistress of the terrible, brilliant comment that once said, can never be unheard. I have a document on my phone where I jot them down. “You’ve got so much hair!” she said a while back, when I was feeling very pleased with my locks. “You look like Charles the Second... in a good way!” 

Charles II, c1676 by John Michael Wright. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust

I remember her making many things when I was a kid. She sewed lavish Austrian blinds for herself and friends, and became obsessed with interior decorating using sponges to stipple paint. I think she did it semi-professionally for a while. She made fabric picture frames, too. These days, she is a big fan of drawing eyes or faces on unexpected things, and likes to alter photos of clothes in magazines by drawing on better sleeves. She’s also very good at charades, particularly if she cheats and uses props. I’m not allowed to share a photo of her doing Dracula with cotton buds for fangs, but it is epic. She was over the moon to introduce me to the work of Kaffe Fassett a few years back, thrilled that there was a textile artist I didn’t know about but she did.

Kaffe Fassett and some of his characteristically colourful work

When I spoke to her this week to ask her whether she thought herself in any way as a creative person (“no: I’m too lazy and I’m too practical.”) she told me that she’d taken a watercolour class in the past (“mine was the worst ever. The bowl of fruit looked like it had been run over by a steam roller!”) but that her house was too small to clutter up with pictures, and while she’d always fancied making jewellery, she only had so many ears, necks and fingers to adorn. We talked about a quilt that she’d commissioned from an Amish maker in America after a holiday in the US. Mum chose the pattern (starburst) and colours for it, and found a cleaning job so she could save up to pay for it. She rang me back with “a new angle” on the story half an hour later, which made me smile, thinking about the creativity inherent in wanting to tell a tale well.

There’s a framed tapestry at her house that I love. It’s sewn with tan, burgundy and russet wool, long vertical stitches forming a landscape of rolling hills. There are little houses with different coloured roofs, and trees. It’s not pernickety and detailed but, thanks to the wool, substantial and satisfying. I remember it hanging in our old lounge, and her making up stories about who lived in the houses and why they had different coloured tiles. I now know that the original design was supposed to look different, with more stitches. But Mum wasn’t having that - she freestyled and turned a C&H Fabrics kit into something uniquely hers. 

This town is as familiar to me as the one in which I grew up

So no, there weren’t any gallery visits growing up, and yes, it took me until I was well into adulthood to get to most of London’s cultural destinations. But like Mr Winkleman with his daughter, my parents taught me the value of creativity, even if it wasn’t expressed through oil paint.

I’d love to hear about what your parents taught you about art, and making. And also about your examples of lateral creativity - something that might not seem to fit the idea we have of what being creative looks like, but actually bloody well is.