What I Discovered When I Traced My Heritage Back 200 Years Will Astonish You
At 77, I should be content with retirement. Maybe tending a garden, reading books, or playing with my grandchildren. Instead, I'm surrounded by computers and digital tablets, creating digital art with the passion of someone a quarter my age.
My friends think I've lost my mind. But, recently, while digging into family history, I uncovered something that changed everything I thought I knew about myself and my family.
What I found wasn't just a family tree. It was an artistic dynasty spanning two centuries, it was masters whose work hangs in royal collections and cathedrals across England. And suddenly, my "crazy" decision to become a digital artist at 77 made perfect sense.
This is the story of five generations of artists, a legacy nearly lost to time, and why some callings are too powerful to ignore.
Chapter 1: William Usherwood (1821-1915) - The Royal Pioneer
It started with a single name in a dusty genealogical record: William Usherwood, my great-great-grandfather. What I discovered about this man still takes my breath away.
William wasn't just an artist. He was a master who painted portraits of Queen Victoria, Princess Alice, the Duke of Wellington, and Prince Oscar of Sweden. These weren't amateur sketches - these were commissions from the most prestigious royal families in the world.
But here's where the story becomes truly extraordinary.
On September 27th, 1858, William Usherwood made history. Using his amateur equipment, he captured the first photograph of a comet ever taken and beat the well-funded astronomers at Harvard College Observatory into the bargain.
Think about that for a moment. My great-great-grandfather was simultaneously painting portraits for royalty AND pioneering scientific photography. He was an artist who embraced new technology so fearlessly that he added a chapter to the history books.
His photograph of Donati's Comet still exists. I've added it as the hero image for this blog—a ghostly image that represents the first time humanity captured light from a fast-moving object in space. It's a moment when art and science converged to push the boundaries of human knowledge.
William ran a successful photography studio in Dorking, Surrey, England, from 1860 until he sold it in 1907. He and his wife, Amelia, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1913, just two years before his death at the age of 94. He enjoyed a long life dedicated to creating beauty and breaking new ground.
William & Amelia Usherwood on their 60th wedding anniversary.
I also have one of his oil paintings—a charming piece depicting a Black and Tan Terrier with a slipper, painted in 1898 when he was 77 years old. Coincidentally, the same age I am as I write this.
Black & Tan Dog - Oil painting by William Usherwood 1898
Chapter 2: Horace Richardson (1853-1928) - The Cathedral Master
William's artistic genes passed to his daughter Julia Mary, who married Horace Richardson in 1885. Horace was a master woodcarver whose work still graces some of England's most sacred spaces today.
As a lecturer in wood carving at Peterborough School of Art, Horace was already recognised for his skill. But after marriage, he struck out on his own, establishing a workshop in Burgess Hill, Sussex, where he created ecclesiastical masterpieces.
His commissions read like a who's who of English religious architecture: the chancel screen for St. Michael's Church in Maidstone, two choir screens for St. Saviour's Cathedral in Southwark, and the reredos for Christ Church, Oxford. These aren't merely decorative pieces - they're integral parts of buildings where people have worshipped for generations.
I have Horace's original sketchbook, where he meticulously planned each carving before touching wood. The attention to detail is breathtaking - every curve, every flourish mapped out with the precision of an architect and the soul of an artist.
A page from Horace Richardson's sketchbook
There's also an ornate picture frame he carved in 1886 that's been passed down through our family. According to my mother, the photograph in the frame shows Horace himself - a master craftsman preserved in his own creation.
A photograph of Horace Richardson in a frame he made 1886
A cutting from the Furniture and Decoration Magazine shows one of his exhibition pieces, a testament to the recognition his work received in the art world of his time. Like his father-in-law William, Horace wasn't just creating art - he was making art that mattered, art that lasted, art that was worthy of England's most important institutions.
A cutting from Furniture and Decoration Magazine showing a Horace Richardson exhibition frame
Date unknown.
Chapter 3: Gladys (1921-2013) - The Lost Generation
Art should have flowed naturally to the next generation, but life had different plans.
Horace and Julia's daughter, Maud, was not known to have any special artistic talent. It was their granddaughter, my mother, Gladys, who carried the artistic flame, but her story is touched with tragedy. A cycling accident at 14 left her with disfiguring scars that affected her confidence and shaped her entire personality.
Despite leaving school at 14 with no formal education, Gladys possessed remarkable intelligence. I remember showing her complex mathematics problems from my homework, such as simultaneous equations and other math problems that challenged me. She would often solve them using first principles and native wit, leaving me shaking my head in amazement.
More importantly for our family story, Gladys was a gifted artist. She painted beautiful figurative watercolours in her early years, with dogs and landscapes as her favourite subjects. I vividly remember a large painting of two collie dogs that graced our mantelpiece throughout my childhood—a masterpiece that brought beauty into our humble home.
But raising three children alone in poverty forced art to take a backseat to survival. Gladys's artistic years were interrupted by decades of struggle. She returned to painting later in life, working in oils, but by then, macular degeneration had damaged her eyesight, and her late work never matched the brilliance of her early watercolours.
Here's the heartbreaking part: all of Gladys's artwork is gone. Her unconventional later life - living in vans and sheds on a plot of farmland she refused to leave - resulted in the destruction of everything she owned. Not a single painting survived. An entire generation of family art, lost forever.
But the genes remained. The calling persisted. And it was waiting for the right moment to resurface.
Chapter 4: Will Flavell - The Awakening
I felt the pull early. At 13, I was working evenings and weekends - not for pocket money, but to buy paints and brushes. While other kids played, I was in a bakery from 6 PM to 8 AM, carrying 51kg sacks of flour and learning to make bread, all so I could afford art supplies.
Looking back, I'm shocked at how much I worked, but at the time, it felt natural. The artistic calling was strong.
I chose art as a GCE subject and created several oil paintings for my mother, which she treasured her entire life. Sadly, like all her possessions, they were lost when her circumstances deteriorated. But the drive to create never left me.
What's remarkable is how closely my path mirrors my great-great-grandfather William's. He embraced photography when it was a revolutionary new technology. I've always been drawn to innovation - building electronic circuits in the 1960s, programming computers in the 1970s, experimenting with neural networks in the 1980s, buying my first electric car in 2011, and installing solar panels in 2010.
Like William, I'm an early adopter who sees possibilities where others see risk.
For 40 years, career and family took precedence. I became a management consultant, travelled the world, built businesses, and raised children. But art was always there, whispering.
Then in 2020, Midjourney emerged - an AI that could create images from text descriptions. Unlike other AI tools that thought like photographers or illustrators, Midjourney seemed to think like an artist. For the first time, I had access to technology that could bring my creative vision to life.
During 2024, I created thousands of images. At 77, I launched my art website in March 2025. I'm not just making art - I'm using the most cutting-edge creative technology available, just as William did 167 years ago when he first pointed a camera at the night sky.
The parallel is perfect: both of us artists who embrace new technology to create something unprecedented.
Chapter 5: The Living Legacy
The artistic gene didn't stop with me. My daughter, Leah, showed talent from an early age. The pencil sketch she drew of me at 14 demonstrates genuine skill - confident lines, proper proportions, real artistic understanding.
Leah's pencil drawing at age age 14 of her father
Later, when transitioning from marketing to becoming an online influencer, Leah created and sold art to help pay the bills. She developed her own distinctive style that proved popular with buyers. Like her ancestors, she found a way to make art both beautiful and commercially viable.
A selection of Leah's art awaiting shipping.
And then there's four-year-old Mikyla, my youngest daughter. Perhaps it's a father's bias, but her artwork shows something special to me - an eye for colour and composition that seems beyond her years. The painting of flowers she created is surprisingly sophisticated, with a sense of balance that suggests natural artistic instinct.
Mikyla's flower painting at age 4
Six generations. From William's royal portraits and the world's first comet photograph in the 1850s to Mikyla's flower paintings in 2025. The flame has never gone out.
The Pattern Revealed
Now I understand why I couldn't escape art's call, even at 77. It's not just personal passion - it's more like genetic compulsion.
But here's what makes this story even more powerful: the experience that comes with age has made my art richer than it could have been in my youth. When I create pieces about human origins, our future, or our relationship with our planet, I'm drawing from 77 years of living, loving, travelling, building, failing, and starting over.
Young artists create from imagination and energy. At 77, I create from wisdom and experience. Every piece carries the weight of a lifetime spent observing humanity across six continents, raising five children, building businesses, and learning from both triumph and loss.
My great-great-grandfather used new technology to capture light from space for the first time in human history. I'm using new technology to explore deep questions of human existence. Same DNA, same drive, same willingness to push boundaries.
The boy who worked night shifts to buy paints finally makes sense. The 77-year-old surrounded by computers and tablets isn't crazy - he's continuing a conversation that began 200 years ago.
Art isn't what I do. It's who I am. It's who we've always been.
And now, finally, I have both the tools and the life experience to create art worthy of the family name.
Please drop your email below so we can stay in touch, and explore my gallery to see how five generations of artistic DNA express themselves through cutting-edge AI technology. Every piece tells a story—and now you know the true story behind the artist who created them.