New Blood Art: The Story - Part 8

London 2004 - 2007

It’s interesting – there are periods of my life that I look back on and feel alive in the remembering of – having been aligned in body and mind. It’s easy to recall those moments from an emotional and kind of textural vantage point – and they’re fun to write about. They tend to arrive with memories of interesting coincidences, and maybe a bit of magic.

But I’ve been struggling to write this part, and came back to try again – because I had this nagging sense it had landed on a dull note. It didn’t resonate. It left me with the feeling I’d just missed it.

The first version felt flat and summarised – not embodied, not textured, not free. And on reflection, I think I can see why. I wasn’t really present in my life at the time – not in a truly embodied way. I can recall the events, but only from a kind of detached vantage point – like I was standing just outside the scene, narrating the shape of things I wasn’t quite in. What comes back now is more like a monotone description. An echo of something muted.

And when I say that, I don’t mean the business. The business part felt alive. That was the exciting bit. But the rest had fallen into – how to describe it – a kind of ongoing muffled mismatch. Like going through the motions with no real signal coming back. Somewhere between autopilot and a slightly mistuned radio. All comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time - ambient dissonance. Where nothing looks obviously wrong, but something in you is quietly misfiring. Like living next to a low-frequency hum you can’t locate, but is affecting everything. Anyway. It’s not easy to sum up a period when nothing was technically wrong, but nothing was quite right either. Let’s just say: it somehow made sense at the time.

Teaching continued at the ballet school. The business, quietly, was beginning to form. Around that time, I came across Business Link, an initiative connecting small business owners with local advisers. It was government-funded, I think, or possibly through the Chamber of Commerce.. For a small fee, they’d pair you with a business advisor nearby. I was matched with a great business woman - sometimes we met around my kitchen table and other times in hotel lobbies.

She listened. Not the surface kind. The kind where someone really hears what you’re saying, holds it, and reflects back something more coherent than you'd thought you meant.

She didn’t project or advise too quickly. She helped me to define my vision and build the structure to hold it. We met regularly, reviewed priorities, to-do lists. At one point, I’d been working through the trademark process and discovered that the name New Blood was already registered, in the art and design sector, by a charity called D&AD. It was one of those first encounters with the real mechanics of branding and intellectual property - how things are held, how names are protected. An unexpected crash course in trademarking.

(Over the 21 years of running this small business, I’ve noticed something. Not about strategy or growth. About people, I’ve noticed patterns, who shows up with integrity, who doesn’t, and everyone in between. Starting a business has given me a lens through which to see the psychology and nature of people. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that I have since trained in psychotherapy - it’s been an incredibly rich training ground.)

There are moments, few and unmistakable, when you meet someone who offers support without agenda. Who doesn’t push, direct, correct, or pull away. Someone whose presence helps you hold your own shape more clearly, because they’re with you. This was the first time I experienced that in a business context. Not someone trying to mould me into a founder. Not someone trying to model “success.” Someone standing with me, facing the same direction, helping me name and hold what was already forming.

That was the first. The second came soon after, whilst addressing the trademark issue. What followed was a not-so-small act of generosity. I contacted D&AD, explained what I was building, that I’d started a new venture with emerging artists and they responded with real grace and warmth. Their sector overlapped with mine, though they said they didn’t want to interrupt my progress in a complimentary field - after all we were both in the business of helping young artists and so they legally agreed that I could register the trademark in the category of fine art.

It felt like another one of those unmistakable moments. No power play. No negotiation. Just a quiet and more than honourable yes.

Two such positive experiences, simultaneously. It was contagious. Perhaps also lulling me into a kind of false security, my initiation into business through people demonstrating something close to grace. A steady and generous mentor and D&AD offering what felt like real philanthropy. Those gestures were formative. They set a tone and showed me what real decency in business looks like. I trademarked the name, legally and symbolically and the work continued.

This was the era when websites had to be built line by line. I was working with a web developer in face-to-face meetings, trying to explain an idea that didn’t quite have a shape yet. In between that, teaching art and going to degree shows and art studios.

I love art studios, the smell of white spirit, linseed oil, enticing objects tucked in corners. That moment when the world tips, and suddenly everything might be art - a fire hydrant, a beautiful sandwich, the light on the floor. I started to sign artists. Bought two huge wooden plan chests to hold the work at home - wrapping paintings and objects when they sold. A computer on one side of the kitchen table, a painting on the other.

Then in 2006, someone suggested I meet a business expert they knew, in tech, maybe. I don’t remember. I went one evening to his home in South London, walked through the house, out to his garden office. I told him what I was building. The artists. The gap in the market. The need.

He listened, then said, but this is just a hobby for you, isn’t it?
I said no.
But you’re still teaching, he said. So you don’t really believe in your own idea. Why should anyone else?

That weekend, I was on house duty at the ballet school. There had been powder snow overnight, light, fine, the kind that covers everything without weighing it down. Driving through Richmond Park making the first tracks through the snow.. I pulled up to White Lodge. It was white on white, like a snow globe - perfectly still, glowing, unreal. That poignant, pre-vanishing kind of beauty. The kind that carries its own ending. I thought, this is perfect. And it’s never, ever going to be this beautiful again. The next morning, I handed in my notice.

In psychotherapy, they might call it a paradoxical intervention. I'm not sure he meant it that way, still - I'm grateful to him.

Once I committed, it moved.
The press began to take notice.

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