Hannah Munby of the Fen Ditton Gallery in Cambridge recorded the following interview with me toward the end of a 6 month residency with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, in 2022. Dr John Fanshawe invited me to come to Cambridge to work in the David Attenborough building and at the University Museum of Zoology. The residency... Read more »
“…and in a moth’s life in the ditch’s low level sky by the glow of a flower in the clothes of a messenger maybe this wish whatever it is will simplify.” Alice Oswald ~ In the two years since my last blog post I have had the enormous privilege of working with four seriously... Read more »
There is something wonderful about printmaking. Often thought of as the poor relation of painting, it is hard on the hands, messy, brain-tanglingly difficult, (you work in mirror image) and frequently frustrating but to those of us who love it …well there is nothing quite like it. However difficult it might be to explain why... Read more »
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 »
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 »
At its deepest level, any poetic utterance grows out of a desire to overcome loneliness, to share experience. “Absence” Charcoal and Inks on Arches paper. 40″X 27″ approx For a long time – really since I started making paintings as a conscious adult – I’ve been troubled by notions of ‘self’ and of art as... Read more »
This is to be the year I learn la manière noire – the dark method. There is something rather magical about mezzotints. I’ve noticed when printing them in the workshop that it is never long before some curious soul is drawn to look over my shoulder and enquire, “what on earth is that?“ They are simply unlike anything... Read more »
