My Heritage: A Collision of Identities
I was born to a Persian Jewish mother and an English Christian father, but I never felt fully part of either.
I grew up in a space between cultures, where identities blurred rather than defined.
My mother was Persian Jewish, but she wasn’t religious. Her father was Orthodox, a man who prayed three times a day, but he never forced his beliefs on her, and she never rejected them either. Faith was part of her world, but so was freedom. She came to England, in part, to escape the hold of religious and societal expectations. In Iran, her friends came from all backgrounds—Muslims, Baha’i, Jews. There was no division. It was just Persians, and that’s how she raised me.
That perspective shaped me.
I was raised outside of any specific religious or cultural community. My dad wasn’t around, and we had no Persian Jewish family in the UK. Instead, my mum made sure I had exposure to different worlds.
I went to a Catholic primary school, and until I was 13, I spent my summers with my English aunt and uncle. My uncle was a vicar, and his world of sermons and structured belief systems contrasted completely with the mysticism of my mother’s culture.
On my dad’s side, my grandmother’s family had a long history in the British Navy and Army—generations of men high up in the ranks who traveled across India, Russia, and the Middle East. I never met my dad until I was 30 years old. When I finally did, it wasn’t just about reconnecting—it was about letting go. About understanding myself better and giving myself the closure I needed.
And then, there was my mum’s Persian mysticism—an energy that shaped the way I saw the world.
She would read my coffee grounds, tracing the patterns left behind at the bottom of the cup, telling me the stories they held. She burned Esfand, the Persian version of sage, believing it warded off the evil eye. If she felt negativity around me, she would sprinkle salt over my head for protection.
For her, mysticism was everywhere, and I inherited that way of seeing the world. It funnelled into my art and creativity.
If you were going to read a Hafiz poem, she’d say, “Wherever you open the page, that’s your destiny.” That way of thinking stayed with me—this belief that meaning could be found in the smallest things, that life had its own way of speaking if you were willing to listen.
That process of seeing signs influenced my art completely.
I started noticing hidden faces in the sky, in wood, in stone—characters emerging from textures, shapes, and shadows. I let go of perfection. Instead of forcing an image, I let it become what it needed to be.
Words & The Wind: The Ritual of Writing
I didn’t just draw—I collected words.
On my way to work, I carried notebooks, always ready to catch something. I’d see a phrase on a poster, a random word on the Tube, or hear a word in a song, and I’d write it down. No order, no structure. I let words scatter across different pages, disconnected but waiting to form something.
Sometimes, when the train pulled into the platform, I’d hold my notebook open and let the wind turn the pages, trusting that wherever it landed was where I needed to write next.
It wasn’t about making sense in the moment. It was about letting my mind clear—about writing first, thinking later.
Days, weeks, months later, I would go back through my notebooks and start piecing things together—spoken word poetry emerging from fragments, images connecting to words, stories forming from chaos.
It made me feel alive, like I was part of something bigger than myself.
The Beginning of My Artistic Journey
Art wasn’t just something I did—it was something I needed.
Like a pressure valve, it allowed me to release everything I couldn’t say, everything I couldn’t process. When I first started painting, I didn’t know where it would take me. I just knew I had to do it.
For most of what I call Chapter 1 (2006 - 2020), art existed in the gaps—between work, between responsibilities, between the chaos of life. I was working full-time, trying to create something for myself, trying to connect to my inner world.
It was a journey of self-discovery, but I didn’t realise it at the time. I was just following instinct, creating, letting go.
I always had words in my mind, but writing wasn’t easy for me. Maybe I’m dyslexic—maybe it’s just how my brain works—but I struggled to write in an ordered way. Instead, I let my drawings guide me. Through them, the words started forming. My thoughts came out in pieces, scattered, unstructured. But that was the beauty of it. Like a puzzle, I began piecing my thoughts together, shaping them into something real.
The First Three Canvases
There were three paintings that started it all—Reflections, Truth of Our Hearts, and Storyteller.
They were raw, emotional, and full of symbolism. I wasn’t thinking about technique or rules; I was just trying to understand myself.
Reflections captured the dialogue between my subconscious and conscious mind. It was about courage, humility, and stepping into the unknown.
Truth of Our Hearts explored love—not just romantic love, but self-love, acceptance, and the complexities of emotion.
Storyteller was about freedom—the idea that art, like life, had no rules. I could shape my own narrative.
Looking back, I see how much they foreshadowed what was to come.
Concepts That Emerged from My Work
This approach—seeing signs, embracing randomness, letting things come together naturally—became the foundation of my work.
My art wasn’t about making a perfect image. It was about discovery. About noticing what was already there and allowing it to take shape.
Telastory emerged—art as a theatrical experience, a space where stories could be swapped, shared, and evolved.
Droplets followed—a world focused on outer soul behaviours, small movements, lightness, and forward motion.
My fascination with numbers deepened:
3 (Outer Soul) – The external self, how we navigate the world.
13 (Inner Soul) – The internal self, our emotions, our subconscious.
All of these weren’t just ideas. They were part of my evolution.
Closing Thoughts: The Path to Chapter 2
For 14 years, I balanced full-time work with my art.
Every spare moment was spent creating. Every stroke of the brush, every mark on paper, every line of poetry was a step toward understanding myself.
Everything in Chapter 1 led to Versions of Robert and butterflies
It wasn’t just about art anymore—it was about identity, transformation, and survival. Looking back, I see how my art shaped me as much as I shaped it.
And as I moved forward, I realised—the story was only just beginning of my artist’s journey.
By Robert Paul