This episode concentrates on loss through absent fathers. Mark and I share similar experiences with absent fathers but have processed them in quite different way. Unlike other episodes I share a lot more here about my own experiences than usual. There’s a lot of things that Mark mentioned in this episode that moved me to tears, and perhaps shows that’s there’s still some work for me to do around my own thoughts and feelings about my father which I mention in the podcast. Mark is very open, clear and insightful about the past but I think that maybe for some, this might be a little bit of a difficult listen. Having said that, some of his reflections are down right inspiring. He talks about what he went through at different stages in his life relating to this, grieving the loss of his father decades before he died, what it meant for his mother and also how it effected his romantic relationships. He also talks about what it meant to come out to his dad and how he responded to that.

Mark is an only child, born and raised in Southampton by his mother, his father, of whom a lot of this podcast is about, was absent through work. Mark went to art school in Winchester & Canterbury and also did an MA in European Cultural Planning at DMU in Leicester. He trained to be a painter (artist, not decorator). For a while he lived as an artist in a squat in London, was showing his work from his studio and occasionally teaching but when he was approaching his 30s decided to get himself a ‘proper job’ in his words, and moved into arts development through local authorities and the Arts Council. He now supports artists as his own artistic practice.

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