A Jazz Musician in Lockdown As with most regular working musicians, lockdown was probably intended for us all to become virtuosos. That was the plan in the first month but after a while the dust starts to settle on our instruments and the spiders move in and find places only seen by my luthiers. A jazz musician in isolation lockdown was not a good place to be, no gigs and looking for something to do. I could write another popular book or record another album or do something totally new and out of character and out of my comfort zone perhaps? I watched a lady across the road sit in the sun in her garden all day. She never moved. I never saw her face, head down wearing a large French summer hat. I presumed she was asleep. But she was painting. She gave me some paint and brushes - I was in lockdown getting bored and decided to give it a go and learn. Trees, seascapes didn't interest me. I play many musical instruments and I collect tropical fish so I decided to turn tropical fish into musical instruments. I enclosed my first painting on a comment I made about sea conservation on social media and it was picked up by a world charity sea conservation organisation called “Just One Ocean” and sponsor of a hugely controversial TV program called “Seaspiracy”. They liked and wanted to use one of my designs for a summer promotion t shirt about over fishing. My new naive form of art was being recognised and I was soon made an ambassador of the company. I decided to design and paint more. My theme was painting in acrylics quirky pop art musical fish with names that played musical instruments, formed an underwater band and preserved the ocean from plastic waste and pollution. The plan was to write another book - this time a children's book with my painted illustrations encouraging children to learn an instrument. They became popular and I was asked to make prints, which soon became cards selling on the internet. Shops loved them and started to stock them. So far I have designed/painted over 10 characters all individual instrumental music playing fish. Gigs will come back but my story continues, still designing, still painting, still expanding my new lockdown friends - The Musical Fish. See us on Facebook ; The Musical Fish and www.themusicalfish.com
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