Musician-turned-artist Andrew Foster prepares debut exhibition, Everything Louder Than Everything Else

As a singer-songwriter Andrew released several albums becoming a popular figure on the local scene and was gaining attention further afield as he toured and supported bigger names.

But several years ago Andrew, from Emsworth, noticed he was having trouble hearing people talk.

His partner at the time pushed him to do something about it.

‘I had to have hearing tests,’ he recalls, ‘MRI tests, testing my balance and all sorts, because it could have been something really nasty – a sharp hearing loss in someone relatively young is quite worrying.’

It turned out he has lost hearing in the frequencies where speech sits, and as a result now wears hearing aids in both ears.

‘They reckon I might have been born with it, and as I've got older that threshold has lowered to the point where it's become a problem. With hearing aids I had to relearn certain aspects of playing because my instruments and everything sounded different.

‘I was quite shy about it for a long time – I had longer hair and I managed to hide it for a long time because I thought it would be a stigma, and general "man" nonsense – probably a bit of pride in there too. I was a singer-songwriter with hearing aids, so there was probably some residual nonsense about that too. It's not "cool" is it? There is still a stigma about it. As much as everyone says there's not, there really is. I had to rethink a lot of things.

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‘There was a period where I was working in music studios, but I couldn't do that – you couldn't properly have faith in what you do, and I'm sure most clients would be wary. So a career in studio production was something I felt was out of my grasp as well.’

Around the same time, Andrew, who works at The Wedgewood Rooms, began suffering with poor mental health.

‘It was about 2017 and I found myself at a bit of a crossroads in my life – I'd been doing music for 17 years, but there was a watershed moment where I ended up kind of starting again in my life.

‘There were a lot of things in my life that were broken. My relationship had split, my music had kind of come to a head, even though I was still doing relatively big gigs, there was a realisation I was never going to be able to earn enough money from that to live on without doing other things. I found it hard to go back into "normal” jobs because I had been doing the music for so long.

‘In order for me to try and fix myself, one of the things that needed to be addressed was where my head was at because it wasn't good. At all.’

Two things happened around the same time which led Andrew to change direction – he began therapy and started working for internationally renowned Southsea-based street artist My Dog Sighs.

‘I was so lucky to find a decent therapist, and I was going through that when I started with My Dog. One of those things she tapped into with me was art therapy – getting unresolved stuff from your youth out, darkside/lightside. Without getting too hippy with it, this stuff is real and it's very relevant. It was important for me, but I think everyone should do it to a certain degree.

‘Having someone else make you take a look at yourself and seeing what's working for you and what isn't, the weekly art therapy was a stable thread.

‘With all that stuff going on in my head – the self-analytical approach to my life and art, it all kind of melded into one. It's still extremely important to me now to clock in with mental health aspects, it comes across in my art, it comes across in everything I do.’

And he acknowledges that he was lucky to be able to go private for his therapy.

‘It's a tricky conversation because the NHS is where it is, and it's not their fault – I was waiting for a very long time, and I actually went private in the end. When you're in the state I was in, time's not on your side – you need help now. You're not "waiting" at any point, so when someone puts a timer on something, it's irrelevant to you.

‘I still had the strength, if you want to call it that, to seek out someone private, and at the time I was staying at my dad's so I was lucky enough to have the money to do it – I couldn't afford it now.

‘It's all been positive though – it's led me down a different path, still expressing myself like I would with my music, and I do still play, but I was so narrowly focussed on it, nothing else mattered.’

Andrew also started working with My Dog as ‘his dogsbody’, but the experience, combined with the art therapy encouraged him to start creating his own artwork.

‘I was into art as a kid, but I was never trained, or studied the masters, or any of that stuff that you're meant to do as an artist.

‘Paul/My Dog said to me, just start putting stuff out on the streets, redirect that energy and turn something broken into something a bit more positive. And from there I got the bug for it.

‘I started off doing street art as Little Blue, who was this little elephant character – he's still around but he's taken the backseat for the moment – and from then on I went and did loads of abstract stuff. I started getting really into that – Kandinsky and Miro and stuff like that – but still with the grit of street art.’

Now Andrew is putting the finishing touches to his debut solo exhibition, Everything Louder Than Everything Else. He has been part of group exhibitions and displayed his work online, but this will be his first time standing alone as an artist in a gallery setting.

Featuring bold neon colours and brave movement, these large-scale abstract paintings capture moments of reflection and struggle in the artist’s life. Open to interpretation, Andrew’s paintings have become an alternative therapy, documenting his long journey through music, therapy and hearing loss, resulting in a unique visual language.

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Moving from one art form to another, Andrew has been concerned about how his new works would be received.

‘I've been represented in galleries before but I've never done my own show in Portsmouth and it took me a long time to get my head around being part of this in Portsmouth. Even though I was on the fringes [of the art scene], and I know everyone around here – mainly because of Paul, I was always a bit sceptical about coming in as "proper" – it wasn't my background, and there was a bit of friction.

‘Trying to be taken seriously as an artist, doing something like this and focusing on it is important to me.’

Mostly working out of his home in Emsworth (‘Everything's covered in paint, including the cat, X-box, my dinner for that night...’), or occasionally at My Dog Sighs’ studio, Andrew has already experimented with various styles in his artwork – you can see previous works on his website.

‘Paul's always going on about trying to stop my scattiness, and I was exactly the same with music. I'd listen to a soul record and I'd want to just explore Motown, or I’d listen to a synth record and just want to be New Order or something. It's always been the same with me and I've kind of secretly liked that about myself, but it is also detrimental business-wise! Someone needs to keep me inline and get me to focus, this show has been great for that, and Paul's been alongside me going: "What are you doing?" if I start going: "Ooh, shiny things!" and going off on one.’

He was also concerned about imposter syndrome – that nagging feeling that he didn’t belong in the art world: ‘Some of it's in my head, some of it's real – the same tropes are in all art.’

And his friendship with My Dog Sighs could be a double-edged sword – does he worry he’s only getting breaks because of that?

‘Of course. I've always been very careful of his “brand” for want of a better word – brand's a nasty word for art, isn't it? He's been good to me and I don't want to take the mickey out of that.’

Everything Louder Than Everything Else is at The Corner Collective on Albert Road, Southsea on February 17-19, and 24-26.

Follow ‘andrew.foster.artist’ on Instagram or go to andrewfosterartist.com.