Drawn to the light

Young musician Paul Robinson has found a new string to his bow: increasingly he prefers to pick up the paintbrush, instead of the drumsticks for night-time gigs with his band, The Somethings.

Paul's work first appeared on the Watford scene about 18 months ago, at the Last Clements Picture Show, where his large abstracts had a magnetism about them, attracted a lot of attention and sold.

If art is supposed to communicate, then Paul's natural sense of rhythm appears to be coming through his paintings, as well as his drums.

The son of well-known jazz saxophonist Steve Robinson, Paul grew up in an environment of music, gigs and creative people. He and his brother and sister went along to gigs, Paul started drumming at the age of eight or nine and played in bands before he left school. He also did a lot of drawing and painting, but didn't stop at any particular point to make life-controlling decisions about what he wanted to do.

"I tried to make it as a rock star, but gradually realised that maybe that was not going to happen," smiled the self-taught musician and artist, who turned to painting large murals and illustrate for magazines and newspapers, as well as CD covers for bands he knew. He recalls doing a Poll Tax advert and a huge mural for Entertainment UK in Hayes, which led to two major commissions.

Just recently he has created an extremely large mural in the kitchen of a mansion in Kings Langley. A friend of his runs a kitchen company and suggested Paul for the work. "They wanted an Arthurian castle, complete with parapet.

"It is fine. Not really what I am interested in, but it's a bill payer," said the artist, whose lifestyle seems as organic as his work.

Paul is just putting the finishing touches to a collection of works he will be showing at two art fairs in London, the Candid Arts Show at Islington Art and Design Fair (October 7-9) and the Battersea Contemporary Art Fair (November 18-20).

The collection is called PNEON, which stands for prehistoric neon and was inspired by recent scientific discoveries indicating that, at a cellular level, we are all "bio-photonic", i.e. our cells contain light itself. This idea, combined with the forms and effect of cooling molten metal, is the basis for the collection.

Fancy words which gain meaning when confronted with a large canvas which appears to be lit from behind. It is so tactile, you feel like touching it.

"I want people to feel free to touch," said Paul, who is going to test reaction to his collection locally, at Art on the Hill near Bushey Arches, before taking his show to London.

He hopes his paintings will prompt questions, and during the two-week show at the small gallery he will be using the space as a studio and putting finishing touches to the collection. Into the work he has also introduced his reaction to the American discovery of ancient machinery, which suggest technology we thought we invented had been around thousands of years ago.

A gentle smile breaks out as the artist suddenly finds it appropriate to point out: "I'm communicating, not preaching. I'm just expressing myself about the things that fascinate me. I have no angst, I am not depressed and I don't feel the need to do large installations of bed clothes."

He does like working on large canvasses, often a metre square, and is also preparing for a solo show at The Radlett Centre in January.

At the same time The Somethings, who are a pop and rock covers band mostly playing in London, made a very successful debut at Waterend Barn in St Albans last week.

Even now, the young man, who grew up in Essex, Hillingdon and Bushey and now lives in a house with a studio in Windsor, shies away from declaring one focus for the future.

Painting and drumming are both part of it. He has also written two novels and is working on a third. "But that's another story," he declares.

As for dreams?

"I would like to build my own tree house with a studio attached. I love wood," concludes the artist, admitting that sculpture could be part of the future, too.