The main driver of Richard’s life has been the philosophical pursuit of happiness.  For Richard, this has entailed his working for himself, at his own pace, always his own boss.  Admittedly, for a period of 2 years or so, fresh from school, he needed to work in an organisation while he figured out how he was going to make enough money from his own skillset to support himself. The anecdotes he tells from this time, however, show he was not working in what most would see as a usual occupation for a young man. While there have been many benefits for Richard in being so wholly self-reliant, there have also been costs.  Richard enjoys having children around him, and believes that they also enjoy his company, but long ago made the deliberate decision to forego parenthood because it would necessitate the adoption of a more regular working lifestyle in order to ensure the regular income required for family life. Happiness is so central to Richard that he was not going to compromise on his decision to follow his artistic pursuits, of which there are many.

Richard was born and raised in Preston in Lancashire in England, the middle child and only son in a family with three children. He had an easy childhood, with positive, encouraging parents who didn’t impose many expectations upon him.  He has treasured memories of nature walks on a Sunday, and annual holidays in Cornwall, near Tintagel, reputed to be the country of King Arthur and his acclaimed Knights of the Round Table.  Richard recalls the thrall of evenings on the beach, sitting on rocks by the open fire, captivated by the power of the waves breaking against the rugged shoreline. At school, he was capable academically but only displayed strong interest in English and Art.  Richard considers his disinterest in things economic as a weakness, claiming zero financial acumen, a “dyslexia towards money and figures”, though his freelance work lifestyle has meant he has come to terms with “saving for a rainy day”. The idea of investment remains a foreign concept.

Richard’s art teacher from school only passed away recently at the age of 94. He was the source of Richard’s initial interest in line art, as a most competent artist himself.  Via the internet, Richard had regained contact with his teacher in recent years and had several Skype discussions with him before his passing.  Although over half a century had passed, and Richard had experienced remarkable success as an artist, he was amused, yet somehow honoured, that his former teacher would still provide criticism of his artwork.  The teacher/student relationship surely stands the test of time.  Richard feels an indebtedness to this man because he saw Richard’s artistic potential from his early teenage years, and encouraged him to monetise his drawings.  Two original pieces were sold, and the proceeds used, at his teacher’s behest, to purchase 100 prints of each, which were sold at a pound each, netting Richard the princely sum of 200 pounds, and the beginning of a financially viable artistic career.

Another of Richard’s school teachers at his Grammar School also had a profound impact, but for a very different reason.  When Richard was 11, his English teacher had set a homework assignment where the students were asked to draw the Rose Beetle man, an eccentrically dressed, flute-playing salesman of animals, a character from the book “My Family and Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell. Teachers can be very thoughtless, if not downright cruel at times, with the teacher publicly critiquing the submitted drawings in front of the entire class.  To this day, the event holds a sting for Richard, as the teacher commented, “Well, you’re never going to be an artist, are you?” While painfully derogatory, this offhand statement may well had provided the impetus Richard needed to prove this teacher totally wrong. An artistic career of over 5 decades proves the point. This poignant moment was not enough to damage a young Richard’s growing appreciation of English literature either. Indeed, at one point, because of his literature-inspired artworks and his love of a goatee, Richard earned himself the nickname Mr Shakespeare.

Like many artists, Richard has gone through different “periods” where he focuses more on one medium, but basic line work underpins most of his endeavours, well, that and the need for a very steady hand. Although he has worked with pencil on paper, he is very fond of the contrast he gets working with ink, which is much less forgiving of any slight error. It seems that Richard moves into a meditative state when he is creating, this giving him the clarity of thought and intense focus that his painstakingly detailed works demand.  Richard flits between various disciplines: artwork, cartooning, graphic design, music, calligraphy and woodwork and has even tinkered with using Artificial Intelligence alongside other tools such as Photoshop in his creative endeavours. However, for Richard, there is nothing like the feel of ink on paper. Monetising these talents and skills has seen Richard work in collaboration with many authors, publishers and other artists to create book cover designs, illustrated oracle and tarot card decks and illustrated books, aside from his own bespoke and commissioned artworks.

Yet another creative medium for Richard is in the field of music.  Richard has no formal training in musicianship, and his teenage self could never have imagined that he would one day play clarinet and koto at an alternate music festival in Bangkok.  Richard describes himself as a “frustrated musician” who serendipitously encountered looping technology which he uses as the base note of the improvised pieces of music he loves to create.  His koto was a junk market purchase. He has a record label which helps him promote his “Music for Contemplation”, tracks which are eminently suitable for meditation, relaxation, massage or dealing with insomnia.  When he plays, “following his nose”, Richard is “away with the fairies” in an out-of-body experience which can be viewed on Youtube. During these moments, sounds become Richard’s personal sanctuary. Richard has been profoundly inspired by Peter Hammill, a prolific experimental English musician and singer/songwriter who is best known for fronting the band Van der Graaf Generator.  Richard admires that Hammill, 75 years old, is still creating new music, though now as a solo artist.  Richard calls Hammill’s music, with lyrics touching on love, relationships, ageing, death, introspection and human folly, “the soundtrack of my life”. For Richard, his greatest hopes for the future are maintaining his health and then eventually dying in his sleep.

A long-time resident in Thailand, it was only just over 5 years ago that Richard moved to Hua Hin from Bangkok after his marriage to his Thai wife ended and he was seeking a change.  Richard was familiar with Hua Hin from weekend escapes from Bangkok which went back over a decade.  It was in Hua Hin that he met his current partner Nana, who has two sons from her previous relationship.  The pair are now in a committed, stable relationship with no plans to change that in the future.  They were adopted by a stray cat who chose to add them to her family and kindly allows them to share her bed!  Ningnong is the main protagonist in a comic series Richard has developed, called “The Private Life of Ningnong”, where Richard uses her eyes and perceived character to interpret and comment on the human worldview.

Nana has her own businesses in Hua Hin, but for a while she and Richard ran a coffee shop in Khao Takiab called Mr Shakespeare in a nod to Richard’s past. It was located in the front of the massage business which Nana was running at the time, and although Richard loved its social club atmosphere and found it a great discussion place to meet and chat with customers who became friends, he quickly realised he is not and never will be a businessman, and that working together with his partner might not be the best of ideas.  Richard can’t work under a manager, so the café business was abandoned, though it was still profitable, and Richard recalls those times with fondness and some nostalgia.

Nana now spends a lot of her time on her businesses at Tamarind Market, and the pair find working in parallel, at the same times but on separate ventures, suits them well, giving Richard a dedicated work-schedule. He still doesn’t really differentiate working from relaxing however, as they seem to bleed into each other. Richard feels he still has a lot to learn although he is unable to specify exactly what that might be.  He is mainly self-taught and has an open mind, continually reading and seeking to find even more challenging things to undertake.  He is still in the process of perfecting his artistry.

One particularly treasured possession is a book, hand-written over a period of more than 20 years, by his great-uncle and lovingly rebound by Richard.  The author worked as a signalman at a railway crossing, a very solitary job, and in his free time painstakingly copied news stories of the day and images from them into his book, which became somewhat of a historical record of his times in the early 20th century. It is the one physical possession Richard might consider braving a fire to rescue, since he admires the copperplate writing and diligence of his ancestor. With the help of others he has located via the internet, Richard has been making concerted attempts to find out more about the life and times of the ancestor who created the journal. Richard seems drawn to the unusual, particularly in terms of texture and the abstract and has a photo on his phone of a large mainly empty photo frame he noticed outside a temple in the town.  It took much careful examination of the mouldering scraps to realise the frame originally contained a tourist map of Hua Hin.

Richard knows his friends think he should get out more, but he is content with his life as it is.  He has few vices other than good Swiss or Belgian chocolate and truly savours idling away an hour or two in a local coffee shop. He is full to the brim of humour and tells great tales.  Few in Hua Hin will have heard the one about his fight with Juliette Binoche though.  As a young, then unemployed, man, Richard took a job as a movie extra that saw him in a fight scene in the woods in the 1992 movie Wuthering Heights, opposite Binoche. Richard admits he was perfect for the advertised role because long hair and an unkempt appearance were mandatory requirements.  To this day, Ningnong is still suggesting that Richard might consider a haircut.