Talking Therapy - Art, Policing, Cancer, and Recovery with Sharon Milton

Show Notes

Summary

Alex chats to fellow artist Sharon Milton about her incredible career as one of the most senior members of the Scottish police force, meeting Barack Obama, recovery from cancer, guns, Arctic expeditions and how creativity helped her escape, rehab and prehab. It was an honour and a privilege to have Sharon recount her incredible and inspiring story.

Sharon’s bio

Contact

Contact Sharon: clola.art@gmail.com

Follow Sharon:

Professional

Sharon Milton is a distinguished former police officer who has made significant contributions to law enforcement in the UK, particularly in Scotland. She began her policing career in August 1994 with Avon and Somerset Police before transferring to Grampian Police in February 1997, where she spent the majority of her career. Milton is celebrated for her pioneering role as Moray’s first female divisional commander, a position in which she demonstrated exceptional leadership and crisis management skills, notably during the emergency response to the widespread flooding in Moray in September 2009.

Throughout her career, Milton has been a trailblazer for women in policing, balancing her professional responsibilities with her role as a mother. She has been an advocate for gender equality within the police force, highlighting the increasing presence of women in senior roles. Her career is marked by several notable achievements, including her involvement in policing the G8 Summit and her leadership in establishing the Aberdeen Division within Police Scotland.

Milton’s career reached a pinnacle when she was promoted to chief superintendent in 2016, a period during which she also faced personal challenges, including a diagnosis of stage-three breast cancer. Demonstrating resilience, she successfully underwent treatment and later participated in the Arctic Challenge, a cross-country skiing marathon, raising over £15,000 for a breast cancer charity.

One of her most significant professional accomplishments was leading the police protective security arrangements for COP26, the largest security event ever held in Britain. Her meticulous planning and leadership ensured the safety of over 120 world leaders, including US President Barrack Obama, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during the event.

In recognition of her outstanding service, Sharon Milton was awarded the King’s Police Medal, an accolade reserved for those with a specially distinguished record in police services of conspicuous merit. Her career is a testament to her dedication, leadership, and commitment to public service, making her a respected figure in the field of law enforcement.

Artist

KPM BSc Hons Sharon obtained O-level art whilst at school, but otherwise has received no formal training. Sharon started painting watercolours about 20 years ago as a means to relax alongside a demanding full time job. She is self taught from books and YouTube tutorials. During 2016, Sharon was diagnosed with cancer and had a period of prolonged treatment and recovery, during which she focused on her art and its therapeutic benefit. She produced botanical watercolour paintings and sold these to

raise over £20,000 for the cancer charity ‘walkthewalk’. Sharon retired from a career in the Police in 2022, and since. that time had enjoyed spending more time painting. Her current passion is painting old wood and metal structures - ‘rusty locks’ and the Scottish coast, skies and lochs! Sharon is currrently working predominantly in Pastels.

Sharon lives in Auchterarder, with her partner.

Transcript


Alex Loveless	Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being. This is first of what I’m calling my talking therapy sessions where I interview someone about their experiences within creativity and mental health. I’m incredibly honored to have a good friend of mine Sharon Milton who agrees to do an interview with me. I think you’ll find that her story is not only incredibly interesting but hugely inspiring as well. She conquered cancer, she conquered the army, she conquered the police, she conquered the Arctic, she conquered guns and she conquered art. Her story is truly fascinating so I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Hopefully this will be the first of many interviews I do. So let’s get on with it. Here’s me and Sharon. I’m here with Sharon Milton. I’ve known Sharon for what? How long have we known each other?
Sharon Milton	Less than a year actually.
Alex Loveless	We met when Sharon came to one of my art group meetings and revealed to me that she had some experience in project management. I immediately jumped on this because I had a bunch of exhibitions to arrange and I’m terrible at organizing so I thought this would be really handy. She was very coy at the time about just how experienced she is and I’ll come back to that. Some point later took the lead on arranging our big show for the Perthshire Open Studios event which was nine days of an exhibition in the glorious Octorider Picture House that saw hundreds of people come through the door and had a ridiculously well-attended champagne reception on the first evening. So that went like clockwork thanks to Sharon’s history in doing this sort of thing. So I’m not going to say any more. I’m going to hand over to Sharon to introduce herself and we’ll see how we get on. Over to you.
Sharon Milton	Yeah thanks Alex. So by way of introduction I would usually tell people that I’m a retiree who spends time doing art and that’s the short version. In my previous life up until two years ago I was a police officer, also a mother of two sons and I live with my partner in Octorider and it’s only really been in the last two years since I retired that I’ve been able to immerse myself fully in art focusing mainly on watercolours and laterally pastels. So I would like to to call myself now and describe myself as an artist. My journey with art has really been threefold. Largely for the first 50 years of my life it was about escapism, escapism from the pressures of teenage years, anxiety connected with home whether that’s issues with my parents or living in an unhappy marriage, escaping the pressures of work. I’ll maybe come back to that shortly. And then nine years ago I was diagnosed with stage three cancer and the art became very much a journey of rehabilitation and recovery for me and since I’ve retired I would say my art is best summarised as prehabilitation. It’s something I do as a matter of routine. I enjoy it and the focus for me now is on staying well.
Alex Loveless	So it’d be good to go back to the beginning a bit and drill down on some of those issues you’ve raised. So if we go back to your childhood and when you first started art and how it helped you.
Sharon Milton	I mean I think like many people I went to school and art was something that was a bit of an add-on, filled an hour or two. I can’t really remember the art classes I had at school which is a bit disappointing because that that was the only form or tuition I ever received. I did ograde art, I remember enjoying the classes because they were slightly easier than some of the more scientific subjects. But in terms of key moments for me, my parents separated when I was 13 which was quite a challenging time and I do recall spending hours and hours on my artwork which was quite unusual for me. And when I look back now it’s only on hindsight that I realise actually that was purely escapism for me and I wouldn’t have used these terms at the time but you know a form of meditation as well, a means of coping. I did art until I was 16 and then went down a science path. The timetable clashed so I couldn’t take art into my sixth year and I pretty much parked art until I was at university and there was a lot going on at home. My mother was an alcoholic and that bought with it a lot of turmoil and upset and she slowly drank herself to death over about three years. And during that time I focused a lot on pencil drawing and some of the pencil drawing I did, very very detailed, took hours and hours and hours and again it’s very clear to me now that that was about escapism. But other mediums I didn’t didn’t explore any other form of art other than pencil drawing because it was easy. You know HB pencil, 2B pencil and a sheet of paper, fairly easy to you know do art wherever I was. And then roll the clock forward I graduated from university, I joined the police and loved it. You know I was in an environment where I fitted in. I at risk of signed an arrogant was a good police officer, a successful police officer and although I was good for the police it was only later that I realised the police wasn’t necessarily good for me. So the pressures and the stress although it was exhilarating, thrilling, fantastic challenges, great people, it did take its toll in terms of stress.
Alex Loveless	Where were you at the time when you joined the police?
Sharon Milton	I joined the police after graduating from Aberdeen University and my mother died just before I graduated and I took the decision to join Avon and Somerset police in Bristol to be near my brother and sister and about a year after joining the police in Avon and Somerset my ego had to accept that my brother and sister would cope fine without me and actually I saw less of them when I lived 40 miles away than I did when I lived in Aberdeen. So love and my interests in outdoor pursuits bought me north again and in 1997 I transferred into Grampian police and then spent 25 years pursuing a really exciting career in the police. So before we get into the police bit, were you living on a farm? I married a farmer and lived on a farm and obviously bought my two sons up alongside that had a very challenging job. So it took a bit of juggling but yes lived on a farm in the back of beyond up in Aberdeenshire.
Alex Loveless	Yeah they say that running a farm is like more than a full-time job. You were juggling two more than full-time jobs and so did you find any time there for art and did that influence the experience
Sharon Milton	of living working on a farm influence that side of you at all? Not at all. I mean I was fortunate that my husband at the time and his parents ran the farm so I had nothing to do with that. I kept it fairly much at arm’s length but had you know two young children as well and a very demanding job that was taken up at least 60 sometimes 70 hours a week plus commuting.
Alex Loveless	You had quite a trajectory from you know the beginning of your career. I guess you were a street bobby at some point. You weren’t in the police office for 25 years. Does it feel like that was a fast progression or is it just something you did over time just worked your way up?
Sharon Milton	So my progression in the police was quite unusual for police officers in that my first promotions came really fast and then over time they slowed down. So the further through the police I went the longer it took to get promoted which is not how things usually happen. Ordinarily someone does 10 years they get promoted to sergeant do another six or seven get promoted to inspector and it gets quicker. For me I did four years got promoted to sergeant three years got promoted to inspector and then every rank after that was six or sort of seven years. So it didn’t feel rapid but against the sort of usual milestones it was.
Alex Loveless	So do you want to give us the highlights then of the big things that happened up until you retired?
Sharon Milton	Okay so I joined Avon and Somerset place in 94 transferred to Grampian in 97 worked my way through a number of ranks so everyone starts at the bottom PC sergeant inspector chief inspector superintendent and in 2015 I got promoted to chief superintendent which is where I spent sort of the last seven years of my career. I’ll come back to that because that was absolutely the highlight of my career I just loved it that was brilliant and then 2015 was just a really pivotal year for me in every way. So December 2015 I got my promotion to chief superintendent I was put in charge of a department that deals with emergency events and resilience planning across Scotland with a team obviously spread right across Scotland and three weeks later I got a cancer diagnosis stage three breast cancer. So literally I just started the job hadn’t even got my feet under the table and I take a year off work and that’s probably where my proper if you like journey with art started again so I’d had maybe 20 years where I’d not picked up a pencil I’d not done it wasn’t quite 20 years say 15 years where I’d not picked up a pencil picked up a brush but I found myself facing a situation where I didn’t know if I was going to live and I don’t say that lightly and receiving treatment that required me to stay away from people and the art was something that I threw myself into. That was quite a challenging year as you can imagine fortunately appeared to tell the tale and recovered. When I went back to work a year later I was very much a changed person ultimately my marriage didn’t survive the cancer diagnosis either but when I went back to work you know had a real thirst for life a real enjoyment of the role and probably the absolute highlight for me in my police career was the seven years that I spent as a divisional commander in charge of the events emergency and resilience planning so highlights for me were leading on the protective security for the climate conference COP26 in November 21.
Alex Loveless	That was in Glasgow?
Sharon Milton	Yeah in Glasgow responsible for the protective security of 128 world leaders and nine members of the royal family just amazing absolutely amazing. I led the planning and supported the delivery of the police and arrangements in Scotland for the Queen’s funeral and I wrote the police strategy which was subsequently adopted across the UK for the response to the COVID pandemic so those were probably the three three main highlights in the latter.
Alex Loveless	Yeah nothing nothing big there. What a boring life you’ve led and you’ve met some world leaders?
Sharon Milton	I have so I’ve still got the screensaver it’s number one photo on my phone of myself and Barack Obama. I was invited to Cameron House during the climate change conference because he wanted to thank me and my team for the efforts that we’d put in so that was absolutely a highlight could only have been improved if his wife had been there because I would have liked to have met Michelle too but no amazing.
Alex Loveless	Life’s full of disappointments hey? Is that anyone else you met?
Sharon Milton	There’s so few people that I’ve met plenty of people that I’ve spoken to on on the phone but I’ve probably got to wait another 25 years before I can display any of the details.
Alex Loveless	Okay any names you can give us?
Sharon Milton	Well I mean when you’re responsible for the security of 128 world leaders and an event things do get interesting and policing is meant to be as far removed from politics as it’s possible to be but that certainly proved a little bit challenging.
Alex Loveless	No she’s staying tight lipped on some of the characters. I know about some of them and they’re very interesting humans I can tell you that. Let’s bring this back to the art. How did you find time to do anything like after your cancer diagnosis? Obviously going back to work and having like a seriously important job were you able to find time?
Sharon Milton	No is the answer so I could go a whole year where I didn’t pick up a paintbrush but conversely there would be some days that I’d come home from work and be brave and took my coat off. I’d painted the same pictures 20 times and I now realize it was just absolutely about coping and stress relief and it was about the process rather than the outcome. Again you know I mentioned escapism earlier. During cancer my painting was very detailed. I did a lot of botanical painting, produced calendars, sold prints for charity. It was very focused work and it was absolutely about generating a product that I was proud of. I spent hours and hours working on that but when I went back to work as I said I’d get home from work some days and you know be cooking tea with one hand and painting version six of a picture with another hand and watercolor has lent itself to that but literally during the year around about the climate change conference I did not do any art at all. Partly because I didn’t have a day off but I realize now looking back that actually my sense of well-being and my mental health would have been enhanced had I found the time to do that.
Alex Loveless	And so you retired as you do quite early?
Sharon Milton	Yeah I took early retirement. I had 28 years service normally the police retire after 30 years service but I promised myself and my partner that if I lived to 50 then I would retire at 50 and I stretched it out to 51 because the excitement and the prospect of leading the climate change conference and then laterally I returned I came out of retirement to deliver the Queen’s funeral. It was just too exciting an opportunity to miss but at 51 I did the decent thing and I retired and I promised myself when I retired that I wouldn’t look for a job for a year. I’d given myself a year off and here I am two and a half years later and I’ve still not got a job and I’ve managed to get bored once so I turned the TV on but otherwise I’m feeling well healthy happy and just managing to eke out as much time to be creative as I would ever want and it’s great.
Alex Loveless	Do you miss it the job?
Sharon Milton	No I mean I’ve got so many highlights that I can reminisce about and still get a buzz when I think about and in fact some of it is so bizarre that when I think about it now it’s like did that actually really happen and I’m sure in years to come if I have the gift of grandchildren when I’m retelling the tales they’ll think I’ve made them up but no I don’t miss it. I think the the stress levels and the pace was quite exceptional actually.
Alex Loveless	So well yeah so if they beckoned you back out of retirement again you’re not going to say yes.
Sharon Milton	Well joking aside I don’t think they would ever do that it was very difficult to manage I think I was well I know I was good at my job and again that does sound arrogant I know I was good for policing policing wasn’t good for me the environment I didn’t thrive in that environment but I’ve heard from pretty much every manager I ever had that was really challenging to manage so I don’t think there’s ever a prospect of me being asked back.
Alex Loveless	It’s always good to have someone around the place that’s going to cause a bit of trouble and shake things up and of course we’re sort of sidestepping the fact that you’re not male as everyone might have noticed and the police is a very male institution in this country but I suspect everywhere. How did you find that side of things?
Sharon Milton	Yeah I mean for me it was part of the challenge and for many years it was quite exciting by the time I left you know 28 years into my service it started to actually get a little bit tedious um so you know for for the first 20 odd years it was quite exciting being the pioneer in the first woman to do this and the first woman to do that and the first divisional commander the first firearms commander the first you know public order commander um you know and I was quite proud of that but in 2022 you would sort of hope the environment that you’re in might have changed um and and unfortunately for most people it hadn’t so frustrating proud of what I had achieved um I tried to create an environment for other women to thrive in as well I’m quite proud of what I did in that regard but no I’d had enough by the time I retired.
Alex Loveless	Yeah I can imagine uh and firearms commander oh yeah you shoot guns yeah
Sharon Milton	so the firearms commander is about authorizing the deployment of police officers with firearms obviously for the climate change conference it was a large part of the event in terms of armed close protection and and oh just great.
Alex Loveless	Did you hold a gun and have you shot a gun?
Sharon Milton	So I did but not in the police so I’ve been in the I spent time in the territorial army so my my role in the police was much more about sitting in an office and doing the checks and balances and authorizing other people to carry guns. Yeah it was it was quite high pressure I have to say you know when you’re when you’re dealing with matters of split second decisions as to whether police officers with guns can you know apprehend someone or go into their home or you can imagine.
Alex Loveless	I can honestly do a whole episode just talking about that that’s really really interesting but we won’t because this is an art podcast I’ve got one more thing I want to cover in case we forget is your um your skiing thing?
Sharon Milton	So when I was diagnosed with cancer and I had six weeks where I was waiting for various tests that were going to tell me whether it was something that they could treat or cure so it was basically the six weeks of waiting to hear how far it would spread and whether it was terminal. A friend of mine in an effort to encourage me and keep me optimistic suggested we sign up to an Arctic marathon in Sweden on cross-country skis and the truth is I thought well I might be dead there’s no harm signing up to this so I signed up to it and put the word out started painting pictures and what happened is people started buying the pictures and prints and cards as a form of sponsorship so two years later when I was almost finished the treatment I found myself in Sweden having raised well between me and my friend £22,000 for the charity Walk the Walk doing an Arctic marathon in I think the coldest it got was minus 36 which was pretty cool um five days in Sweden and um yeah so that was the Arctic marathon.
Alex Loveless	What a dull life you’ve let um okay so let’s bring this back to the art who are you as an artist at the moment?
Sharon Milton	Well it feels like a really exciting time for me because I spent 20 odd years just doing watercolours and when I retired I treated myself and I went on a five-day art course which is the first time I’ve had any tuition other than YouTube which I don’t think you can understate the value of YouTube um but I went on an art course last year and wow oh it was amazing absolutely amazing so where I am now is experimenting with pastels working towards oils and I only say working towards oils because it’s about finding the space and acclimatising my partner to the amount of mess and all the horrific smells that oil paints are going to generate in the house but my inspiration at the moment is Scottish skies and we are really blessed living here are just amazing and I’m I feel blessed because I’m not actually the one that goes out and takes the photograph of the skies I’ve joined a number of Facebook pages about Scottish scenery highland scenery we love beaches and I’m on them every day and there’s just some amazing amazing photographs which I save obviously contact the the people that have generated their mass for their permission but I must have about 200 photos that I’m currently working my way through so not short of inspiration it’s primarily at the moment pastels which is completely new to me love the vibrant colours and just so enjoy seeing seeing a picture come together
Alex Loveless	We exhibited together earlier this year you had your your wall of locks yeah tell us about those
Sharon Milton	Yeah so it was a set of well ultimately I painted 19 rusty locks but
Alex Loveless	by locks we mean the things that
Sharon Milton	not lochs as in Scottish locks but the things that are on doors like hinges yeah and I painted one which was from a photograph that that somebody had posted and I really enjoyed the detail and the colours and the textures it was watercolour so I started on an adventure of wandering the streets taking photographs of people’s rusty sheds and gates and ended up painting 19 rusty locks and I exhibited 14 of those as a set yeah actually I was quite quite proud of that and it was a journey that just sort of progressed and evolved when I did number one I didn’t plan to paint 19
Alex Loveless	Yeah I mean they’re amazing I really loved them and so vibrant in colour people sort of see decay like that and they think of it’s almost dull right and that here’s something that should be thrown away you know tear that door that gate down and send it to the dump and what you saw in that was beauty and vibrancy and colour and what would you think drew you to
Sharon Milton	well I think exactly just what you’ve said you know looking at rust and the colours and the textures alongside shiny metal and alongside woods and you know just every single colour that you could conceive was in a picture and alongside the happy accidents that you often get with watercolour painting you’re not quite sure what the paint’s going to do and where it’s going to go there was the requirement for some precision and detail so it just was very different for my usual style my usual style quite often loose washes but it just ticked to box for me in terms of what my my brain and my soul needed at that time
Alex Loveless	yeah I can really relate to that and and you talk about you know this tension between sort of looseness of watercolour and precision and detail and do you find that you sort of need that to to help you sort of focus in and find that flow
Sharon Milton	Well I didn’t until I retired so before I retired my work was very loose and very quick you know it’d be right I’ve got 45 minutes in between a some report I’m reading that I’m just gonna put colour wet in wet on a paper and see what it does it was just about expression when I retired because I didn’t have as much mental stimulation I found that my works become more focused and more detailed
Alex Loveless	so let’s talk about art and mental health and and obviously you know you seem in very good mental health at the moment you’ve had some huge challenges both positive and negative and so what role do you think the art is played in getting you to where you are today i.e. still here
Sharon Milton	Yeah so for me I think art’s taken three forms to summarise escapism what I would term is rehab and recovery and lastly pre-hab so the escapism you know for many many years whether it was dealing with my parents separation my mother’s alcoholism bit of stress in work being in a very controlling and unhappy marriage art was a form of escaping from that
Alex Loveless	how does that manifest are you really not thinking about anything or is it that it calms your thoughts down or
Sharon Milton	it would certainly calm my thoughts down but when I’m in that zone frequently it would be painting the same picture again and again and again and I thought it was about you know striving for perfectionism but when I look back now it wasn’t about that at all it was about needing the process the therapy of this repetitive process almost like a mantra and how people meditate and calm down actually the art was like that for me but I would go years where I didn’t do it and then I would be compulsive over three days where the world would pass me bias I was so immersed in the art so that was the escapism kind of art for me and that was largely what art provided for certainly the first you know 45 years of my life. The next stage is what I’ll loosely term rehab so it’s during the cancer rehab recovery and it was about capturing the beauty in the world and I was looking at the world through a very different lens when I was living with cancer in terms of you know every sunset was like looking at the last sunset every daffodil was like the only daffodil in the whole world so it gave me a perspective where I really saw beauty in absolutely everything which you know was quite poignant and for me that period of my art was about capturing in absolute detail and with precision that beauty and it felt very spiritual actually so you know the sort of rehab recovery is more about where I was in my life at the time but the trying as an artist to capture probably the realism but also the mood and that’s more so I suppose in watercolour washes that are quite loose.
Alex Loveless	So you sort of touched on meditation and I think meditation and mindfulness are sort of two sides of the same coin and from your description there it sounds like your observation of the world in terms of creating artworks was a form of mindfulness.
Sharon Milton	Yeah I mean and I’ve done you know the various courses in mindfulness and meditation actually the regimes that I follow but there is absolutely a similarity you know of that you know sitting down and looking at a leaf for half an hour and really observing it and really seeing the colours and realising actually it’s not just green and for me it was a bit of an epiphany.
Alex Loveless	Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
Sharon Milton	Yeah I wouldn’t say I’m religious I don’t follow any religion. What I do find and you mentioned earlier about getting into the zone or the flow I think is the term you use. For me when I’m in the flow with my art I do feel like I’m being touched by something spiritual.
Alex Loveless	Amazing and so do you think that experience your cancer diagnosis sort of towing the volume up on the world to number 11? Thinking every day could be your last or among your last. Has that stayed with you all the way through?
Sharon Milton	I try to hold on to it because I think it’s important but I would be lying if I said I remember that every single day. Most of the time I think I do you know I take the dog for a walk and I see the beauty around me and I consider myself blessed and I try to approach every day like it’s the last because I think it’s a good philosophy and it makes me appreciate people and things you know gives gives me gratitude but I don’t always manage it.
Alex Loveless	Yes life keeps getting in the way of being calm and mindful. I guess this being a podcast partially about mental health or mental illness and there’s an element particularly in my life is using art to help in exactly say recovery rehab. If this is of any use to people it should be for preventing relapse.
Sharon Milton	And that’s the really important bit for me this is stage three and I term it prehabilitation. Many stories of people like myself you know use art to escape the realities of life use art as a means of therapy to recover or to treat illness. I’m in the zone at the moment where I’m focused on the pre-hab let’s do things to keep myself well. So rather than for many years you know art was the thing I went to at point of crisis now it’s the thing that I try to do every day as part of my daily routine it might just be five minutes of you know shifting one past or across a paper and then I put it down for the next day but it’s looking at it as part of a pre-hab program rather than a rehab program.
Alex Loveless	And how do you think that works? Why do you think that works?
Sharon Milton	Well I think for me it’s having the discipline and the opportunity now because I’m not working but carving out the time. What also helps is having a space doesn’t need to be a whole room might just be the end of the kitchen table where things are there and to hand that if I just suddenly get the urge even if it’s only you know two minutes that I can express myself through through art without requiring half an hour of setting setting stuff up and half an hour of clearing things away.
Alex Loveless	And so what is that your studio’s next door to where we are now we’re in the kitchen so is that a dedicated studio?
Sharon Milton	No an interest and it started off a gym and for five years it was a gym and I think I went in there twice so I decided actually let’s get rid of the gym equipment and put some art stuff in there and chances are I’ll go in there more than twice so it’s not a dedicated studio but we’re gradually getting there.
Alex Loveless	Yes indeed you’re moving in obviously I think you and me the same is that I would do my art whether anyone saw it or not but I keep accumulating artworks and I have to A get rid of them to clear space and B I think people like them and I could really do with selling more but I do sell the odd one and the money is very appreciated given I’m currently unemployed. We’ve exhibited together have you much history in exhibiting your work and what do you get out of it?
Sharon Milton	Good question the first exhibition I did was with you and the last exhibition I did was with you so I haven’t done much exhibiting I do use Facebook as a medium mainly because you get pretty instant feedback as to whether someone likes things or not so it gives me a sense but I don’t always paint what’s popular I think that’s you know really important I paint what I need to paint. I try to avoid commissions I’ve done quite a few now probably over the years about oh I don’t know 20 or 30 but I find it quite stressful. What I try to do is paint the picture and if someone else likes it and wants to buy it that’s great and that’s sort of the zone that I’m trying to preserve but I will paint the occasional picture for friends that ask me.
Alex Loveless	And what do you get out of that?
Sharon Milton	Well a couple of things what I have done for years because I was in employment and I didn’t want to start having to fill out tax returns I would any pictures I sold I would give the money to charity so I got a great sense of you know self-gratification and just felt good to do stuff for a good cause so that was quite positive but aside from that kind of altruistic side there’s definitely something about ego you know my ego loves it when someone wants to put one of my pictures up on their wall so it’s not all about giving for others and there is definitely that bit about seeing a finished work and knowing that someone values it and appreciates it and wants to look at it every day is just amazing.
Alex Loveless	Yeah it really is and what’s your partner think about it?
Sharon Milton	So she is she’s not very arty which is quite good so we don’t sort of compete with each other in any way and occasionally when I paint a picture she’ll tell me I’m not selling it because it’s going on the wall so that’s quite good feedback as well yeah she just gives me my space to do what I need to do and periodically will tell me she likes a picture she’s never yet once said oh actually I don’t like that which is quite kind because there’s many pictures I paint that do end up in the bin but she’s not the one that tells me to put them in the bin so no supportive is probably the best way.
Alex Loveless	It’s interesting really because our actual trajectories are quite similar we started young disappeared for a couple of decades then took it back up again as a form of therapy and so on and our perspectives are quite similar so it’s really really interesting to hear. Do you have anything else you want to want to say to the listeners?
Sharon Milton	A lot of people say oh well I just don’t get the inspiration and I’m waiting for my muse you know and I think you’ve got to start somewhere so just pick up a pencil and see where it goes rather than wait for you know some divine hand to come down and strike you with inspiration. Yeah I mean the inspiration comes after the perspiration and then before it and then after
Alex Loveless	it and then before it it’s just a process right and I think a lot of people miss the fact that it’s not about this nice picture that you’ve made that’s a happy accident almost that comes at the end of a process that is the bit that we really value and I think you’ve just got to get going you’ve just got to do something it might not be something you end up doing or want to do but anyone can you know I mean and so I think that would be the summary for me you know art isn’t about the outcome it’s about the process yeah absolutely and if this podcast is about anything that that’s exactly it so I’m going to wrap it up there thank you for your time I’ll let you get back into your studio and paint some more Scottish skies maybe I’ll have you back on again at some point but in the meantime thanks for joining me

Talking Therapy - Art, Policing, Cancer, and Recovery With Sharon Milton