Paul Deller, the head of the art department at Christ's Hospital has decided to host an exhibition this weekend on Sunday 4th December. The exhibition offers a look at all the work Mr Deller has been gathering since he was a mere 16 years old. I had the chance to interview him and ask him a few questions about the inspiration for his work. 

So, what inspired you? 

Lots of people ask me what do you do and I say well I'm a teacher, then they ask me do you make art and I go yeah, yeah; I make art and I am always a bit hesitant about saying collage because it sounds like something kids would work with. I's the kind of thing that you work with when you have left over scraps or bits of material growing up, I used to watch art programmes and they would always go ‘let's make a collage!’ So, there’s something a little bit sort of cheap about it , it’s a bit naf but it's what I've done ever since I was sixteen, it’s the sort of medium, I've found , which suits me best. So, I've got this big body of work from when I was sixteen through till now which encompasses 40 years and yeah I thought it’d be good to show everyone, especially the pupils, particularly the pupils. 

How do you feel like your work has changed over the years? 

Well, when I started doing art when I was sixteen, I was very naïve, I was literally starting from a blank canvas I didn’t really have much of a cultural upbringing from my parents I didn’t really go to the cinema very much. We didn’t go to art galleries, I was told to read books, but I didn’t read many of them. I was pretty culturally bare, so I feel like I was really rock bottom there and obviously the last 40 years of my life I've been to art school worked as an artist and I've been really immersed in art and now 40 years on, my work is far more conscious of what it looks like and who it relates to and who I'm thinking about when I'm making it. When you see the work I've done more recently it might look less refined than some of the work earlier on, its far more knowing so that’s how the work has changed it’s become more knowledgeable at the same time I'm just trying to be less knowledgeable. I'm just trying to do things instinctively. I'm quite carefree now with what I make. I often find the more carefree I am, the better the work. 

Has your experience as an art teacher helped develop your works? 

When I was an artist in residence here (Christ’s Hospital) for ten years I was very adamant I wouldn't give any of my ideas to students because they were my ideas, I thought I might run out of ideas. Now, if a student were to somehow be using collage in a very pattern sort of way I'd say I’d say yeah, yeah copy it do whatever,’ I think through my process of teaching I sort of tend to worry too much about what the pupil wants or what I would want but I look at the work and try to see where it should go, and I try and adapt that same philosophy to my own work. What I am very interested in is making work that surprises myself. What I often do is I make collages and then there's piles of bits of offcuts. I’m always excited by the pile of the offcuts and I've often tried to just slide it over onto a piece of paper and try and stick it down but as soon as you stick it down, it looks contrived. I’ve always tried to emulate the freshness of the random discarded, just happened type feel. 

What would you say to an art student thinking of putting up their own exhibition? 

It’s a brilliant thing to do, art should be seen and celebrated be well prepared it’s a quite an emotional time because you're sort of laying yourself bare and people can just come in, and you’re looking in their eyes, trying to figure out what they think, especially with young people because they can be the harshest critics. Be very well prepared, know the space, go in there and be comfortable with where you're moving the walls and things. Don’t spend too much money on it, often we don’t sell loads of work and often you can come out in debt so don’t be afraid of doing a lo-fi sort of thing. To start out, it is important to get your work up, get it celebrated, get feedback and what’s really important is for you to look at it.