About the Artist:

My name is Geoff Horswood and I'm an artist.

This sounds like a twelve-step program, but the statement is important in my artistic journey.  I've drawn and painted for as long as I can remember, but I never seriously pursued art until relatively recently.  As a child, I always did well in art at school, and I spent hours drawing, sketching and creating.  When it came to career-influencing choices, however, I remember being persuaded that I needed to focus my attention on something "more academic" that I could support myself with.  The starving artist has not become an international cliche for nothing!

"No matter," I thought.  I had enough interest in a number of other fields as well that I pursued them rather than art.  Besides, what was art really for, other than to make my friends say "Geoff, you're pretty good at art"?

As I got older, the arts were always there, but in the background.  Sometimes, of necessity, quite firmly in the background, but the times I most thrived were the times I was doing something creative, whether that was drawing, painting, creating languages or making up strange alternate worlds.  Oh yes, I'm primarily a painter, but my creativity takes some interesting side-trips...

But I still didn't know what art was for.

The breakthrough for me came when I was part of a Christian discipleship school, learning how to follow Jesus better.  In this school, I met several other young artists who were using what they saw as a God-given talent in order to praise God.  Just like musicians expressing who God is through the music He gives them, or teachers who open up others to new truths and new ways of seeing.

This made sense to me.  Art isn't just something I do, it's a soul-deep expression of who I am, who God created me to be.  Take away my paints and brushes and I'll use other media.  Take those away and I'll draw in the dust with a pointed stick.  I will do art, even if it's daubing different coloured mud on a cave wall!

And that's the point, really.  This is what it's for.

Because I can't not do it and still be me.