On the day of the move, my father organised the “flit”. Meanwhile, my mother — who was pregnant with my little sister — and I travelled to Glasgow by bus, and from there to Elderslie by train.
My mum knew that we had to get off the train at Elderslie, at its western point, by a monument of William Wallace, who was born in the village. That monument entered my life from that first day and was there every day thereafter, by the simple act of looking out of the window in my parents’ bedroom.
Meanwhile, from my bedroom, the view, through a gap between two council houses, was of Ben Lomond.
In time, my father decided to work on his own, and he set up his own studio in the attic of the house, which he had converted.
The first job I remember him doing was the colour separations for the signs welcoming people to the village. They are still there.
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In those days, graphic design was all done by hand. Lettering had to be hand-wrought. My father will have been one of the last great hand commercial artists; he could draw lettering that looked like print. It was unbelievable. Not only had he to do lettering by hand, but he also had to do all the colour separations for the printing process by hand. This entailed laying red photo opaque onto tracing paper. And I remember, on a scorching hot summer’s day, him going absolutely berserk in the attic, because the heat up there was causing the photo opaque to flake up off the surface of the transparency.
For me, it was an early introduction to the stress of being a self-employed artist, when your fate is in the hands of chemical circumstances. Usually, in my case, my fate is in the hands of a bronzing foundry in Basingstoke.
The house had two bedrooms and a box room. I slept in the box room, and because there was no central heating, I was one of those children who knows what it is like to wake up in the morning to a fern display of ice on the inside of a bedroom window.
Being brought up in the birthplace of William Wallace developed in me a stupendously romantic view of the world. It instilled a notion that the national cause ought to be associated with the Lowlands of Scotland — Wallace did most of his great things in the Lowlands, not the Highlands — and that great things can occur in urban, provincial suburbia.
As a child I spent a lot of my time yearning towards great distances. I still do. As the saying goes: distance lends enchantment to the view. And the view from my bedroom window towards Ben Lomond was a view north. North has always been a great thing for me. Whenever we drove, each summer, to my grandparents in Wick, you’d come across the sign: “Crianlarich, The North” and some dander in you would rise.
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That trip used to involve two ferries — at Erskine and Ballachulish — and would pass great statues, including the Three Commandos at Spean Bridge. It was a heroic journey, through Jacobite territory and then across the quite Scandinavian landscape of Cromarty. I was extremely sentimental as a child.
My time at the house was a coming and going experience, because I was mostly outside, playing. Next door lived Derek, who is a year older than me and now living in Australia. I long to see him again. We would play in the woods at the top of the road.
We always walked around armed to the teeth, almost always with two sticks bound together with string, that used to be a bow, for a bow and arrow. It was our task to save the world.
Alexander Stoddart creates heroic statues in the classical tradition.
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Interview by Mike Wilson