This is my studio for the summer. In January I had the great good fortune to meet a man whose passion for art extends far beyond acquisition. Over the years, he and his wife have quietly and consistently looked for creative ways to provide practical support for working artists. This place, on a hill in the... Read more »
For just a very few days a year, a cherry tree flowers in Halwell churchyard. The ground between the graves is a tapestry of primroses, celandine, violets, cowslips, ground ivy and daisies – a sight magical enough – but the huge flowering tree with its chaos of bee-filled, pink and white petals, is something else... Read more »
I have walked three fields before I notice that I’ve noticed nothing. Well, perhaps not quite nothing. I had, with some glee, registered the frost on first stepping out and I’d enjoyed breaking the ice in a puddled tractor rut near the barn in the second field. Other than that, by the time I get... Read more »
It is hard sometimes to see any good in humans. Listen to too much news and it can seem as if we do only harm, contaminating all we touch. Echoes of King Midas, who, we are reminded by Aristotle, died of starvation – an ‘unforeseen consequence’ of his own vainglorious wish. At the moment I’m... Read more »
Late in the summer of last year I had the great pleasure of re-connecting with my old tutor from Oxford – Nicholas Mann. After a happy exchange of e-mails, towards the end of August, he and his charming family drove down to spend a day with me here in South Devon. I remember pale sunshine,... Read more »
In the mornings, before I go into the studio, Daisy and I walk. About half way round our usual hour-long route is a steep meadow. Strictly speaking a meadow is a field of grass ‘ shut up’ against cattle between March and June or July, mown and then grazed until the following spring. These days... Read more »
I learned only today that the word obsession comes from the latin obsidere – to besiege. from ob (before) and sedeo (I sit) Working on a big drawing like this, for months on end, I am not sure which of us is under siege – who sits before whom? Perhaps the poet Li Bai understood: ‘We sit... Read more »
All day today I have been working at the printshop …and thinking about Helen A rare and lovely bird. When I last saw her, a week ago in the hospice, I had told her about finding a dead moorhen – ‘perfect, undamaged,’ I said. ‘Oh, so quite damaged on the inside!’ She replied. She told me... Read more »
“….In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweeps As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures. “ Lines from Faith Healing by Philip Larkin –