I know some of you will be curious to know a bit more about me – so here we go!

I am Robert Bruce Anderson. Right now it is the middle of 2022, so that makes me about 62 years old. (No, I do not know how that happened).

I struggle to keep my appearance looking normal to what people expect from me, and will regress back into “Hippy” mode as fast as you look away.

If you get to see the videos I make and have made with me in them you will find me barefoot in my workshop. Sometimes with no safety equipment at all. This is going to trigger all sorts of Chatter about me. I don’t really care. OK, so I care that YOU do it the right way, but I am too old to worry about change.

For fun, I am going to try to list the “jobs” I had as a full-time income thing in order. (there were quite a lot of second and third-level jobs or businesses that I ran alongside this list, but that would fill a page).

I started my working life as a career Military Policeman. It was the law that I had to do military for a set time, and the policeman part was one of the early examples of “Life” playing jokes on me. After that, it went like this, Perfume salesman – 1 month, corporate decorator – 2 years, kitchen, wall unit and cupboard designer – on and off for 10 years. Estate agent – 9 months, stationery salesman – 1 year, Jewelry designer (also known as crafting) – 4 years, A name on a grain of rice – 2 years? toy parachute maker – maybe 2 years.

I then knew that I needed to be working with furniture designing again and started a hammock and wooden pole furniture business. This was a lot of fun and lasted for 8 to 10 years (some overlap with other businesses) but one day I woke up and saw that it had turned from a-fun-backyard-business into a real furniture manufacturing business and I stopped having fun. I closed it down, gave away the tools and started doing art.

Perhaps I should mention this already. I was living in South Africa (all my life) and was watching the country decay visibly around me every day. You have no idea how sad that made me. Closing the furniture business was possibly 50% related to this economic and political rot that was happening. A new politician had appeared and watching what he was getting away with made me realize that there was never going to be a return to honest politics ever again. At that point, I decided to start thinking about leaving the country.

It is my pleasure to say that I am typing this right now looking out into a beautiful Canadian Summer sky. Thank You, Canada!

OK, back to the work timeline.

 Being the breadwinner when you are an artist is a bit of a challenge. If you look back at what I did you will notice that it is littered with the word “design”. Decorating, furniture design, jewellery etc. – all arty.

I decided to cave in and try to do full-time art. This lasted for just 10 months and it was amazing. I learned that I loved it. (You know, art) I learned that I am good at some of it and bad at other styles. I found out that I have no patience for details and other things that take too long to do.

I tested I played and after about 4 months started to make money from it. That impressed me a bit. It blew up on me in October of 2008 when some fools caused the world economy to collapse. I had some really big orders cancelled.

I had all this art and no orders.

So, no problem, I went online to sell my art.

WOW, I found out about websites, social media, online marketing and so much more. I am now an expert on all that stuff, yay for me LOL, and am now here. With you.