All About Me

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"

"I want to paint!" was my swift reply.

"What do you want to do now?" inquired my mother "do you want to go out and play?"

"I want to dance!" was my equally swift reply.

"Shall we tidy your paints away?"

"Yes, I can paint when I am too old to dance!" I proclaimed haughtily.

Teri Anne Scoble, age 3

As a young child I enjoyed painting, but all I ever seriously wanted to do was dance. So, I danced, and I danced and danced my socks off! I trained hard and became a professional dancer (hoofer to use another term) working in theatre, films and television. Prancing about to great music was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it all – the cameras, the lights, the action! I even got to boss a lot of other dancers around when I became a choreographer for many television series. 

Dancing on The Paul Nicholas Show, 1977. Image courtesy of Granada TV

Then time passed, and the lot of many a dancer befell me – the impact of TIME and with advancing age and the accompanying decrepitude I realise sadly that my dancing shoes have to be hung up, albeit reluctantly, on their hook forever. Then, I remembered the promise half made to myself in jest, in my youth that ‘I would paint when I was too old to dance’.

And I declare that now is the time to wield a paintbrush again, but seriously this time. I rummage in the attic and search out my old box of paints and with the forgotten excitement and thrill I remember when I first tried that childish painting many moons ago. I sort through dried up tubes of oil. Savouring the lingering smell of old linseed, turps and old oil paint evocative of great masters and wondrous masterpieces. I shiver and feel again that frisson of anticipation when a big white blank canvas confronts you. Oh, the hope, the expectation, the possibility of what this bare blank expanse of primed space could become by the mere act of meaningful lines drawn with a piece of charcoal and daubing some colour upon it! Nor, I think wryly, will the canvas complain at the sagging face that peers into it, nor will it matter that the strokes are done to the tune of the creaks and groans.

I sit down at my easel and I want to paint really badly…no I don’t mean that! I mean I want to paint really well – not badly, fervently. Yes fervently and with gusto, and before anno-domini makes the brush in my hand wobble and shake involuntarily. I admire the white surface before me and start to paint. I paint and paint and paint. I twiddle my bare toes happily. The shoes are off!  

Teri Anne Scoble, 2011

Teri continues to actively choreograph, teach and dance alongside her work as a painter. To view Teri's work visit her Spotlight Profile