I’m going a bit deep with this one. It started in December with me stealing my husband’s Christmas present (before he’d read it)- Oliver Burkeman’s ‘4000 Weeks: Time and How to Use It’ and is continuing with Tara McMullin’s excellent podcasts and essays, via my favourites Wendell Berry and Michel de Montaigne. Actually no.…

Of late, the Arnolfini art centre in Bristol, has been hosting some brilliant exhibitions- contemporary, yet accessible. Their Paula Rego print show is no exception. ‘Paula Rego: Subversive Stories’ showcases the print output of Dame Paula Rego RA, from her days at the Slade in the 1950’s, all the way through to her current…

The vernal equinox has just passed here in England. It doesn’t quite align with Easter, or the ‘start of spring’ (ie 1st March), or in fact my marker of Spring arriving (which is the first day I really feel the warmth of the sun on my skin- sometimes February, sometimes April). But it is…

Helen Frakenthaler, once the queen of abstract expressionism, in a world of big male egos, also made floatingly beautiful woodcut prints alongside her large scale, stained canvases. Dulwich Picture Gallery continues it’s run of excellent exhibitions with ‘Radical Beauty’, it’s survey of not only Frankenthaler’s prints, but also how she made them. I visited…

The origin of New Years’s resolutions actually comes from the Romans, who used the turn of the year to forgive and let go of any grudges or obligations owed by others. So, rather than piling lots of ‘I should’s onto ourselves, we could really be shedding things that are a heavy burden to us…

I meditate and I hand mono-print. Is there a link between the two? I think so. I started to meditate regularly, with a local group, about 8 years ago. I did it initially to quiet a crazy busy mind, as a kind of balm for my worries, and time for myself away from my…