I HARDLY HAD what you'd call a typical education. As a young child I had come with my mother from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England to live in Kenmare, Co Kerry. While there I attended the tiny two-room school in Douris where teacher/principal, Josephine Murphy was never cross. I was dyslexic and she would say "You're good at drawing, you come up and draw on the blackboard".

She gave me great confidence - it was wonderful not to be told "you're no good, try again". Thank God I had that beginning because I think I would have been haunted for the rest of my life if I'd been "told I was poor at spelling. Of all the schools I attended, Douris was the one that I found most helpful to me in my life.

My mother was a great admirer of both D H Lawrence and the progressive educationalist A S Neale. She was keen for me to attend a progressive, free-thinking school and because we had no money she took a series of jobs as cook in a number of schools in Britain, including Blackbrook School, Monmouthshire and St Catherine's School, Bristol.

Going to these schools was a tremendous shock after Douris. They were located in huge mansions and the teachers all seemed like giants - they all wore beards and although they were loving and kind, they were somehow larger than life, quite awesome in fact to a young child. For many of the children, they were schools of last resort. Surrounded as I was by problem children, I began to believe that I too must have a problem. My mother encouraged my drawing and always ensured that I had sufficient art materials.

Later, when I was I4 and attending an ordinary school in Henley upon-Thames, I used to feel embarrassed about my mother's eccentricities and wished she could be like other people's mothers.

Eventually we returned to Ireland, where we lived on a houseboat in Cork. My mother suggested that I enrol in the local art school, but when she discovered to her horror, that they used draped models for life-drawing, she decided that I should go to Dublin where the models were nude. The NCAD was a fantastic experience and I think that getting to know a whole group of people my own age was more important to me than what I gained from the classes. I drew and painted obsessively and the teachers left me alone.

Looking back, I feel that I'm lucky to have had such an unstructured life. I've been able to form my own opinions about the world and as an artist develop my own ideas.