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Having just finished Olivia Laing’s excellent ‘A Garden Against Time’ (last month’s recommended book) and in the next breath, so to speak, visited the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery, my mind is full of gardens and Edens and paradise, but also what gardens might mean to artists and gardens AS art. ‘A Garden […]

Resolutions, intentions, dreams, plans, goals, habits. We aim for change each New Year, set ourselves straight again, brush off the dust from last year. This year it will be better. I will be better. I’m not so sure about that. To want to be better implies that you’re starting from a point of not being

I recently visited the Paula Rego and Goya exhibition at the Holbourne Museum in Bath. It was nightmarish. Not just scary, but surreal, both artist producing dream-like, sinister images that felt like they had reached into the furthest corners of the subconcious mind to wrench out images. They were also intensely light and dark, working

What do you do when your inspiration is zero? After a bottleneck of art events recently and my usual overestimation of my capacity, I found myself burnt out and blue. I knew I needed to do something creative, but the motivation had left me. I was worn out with nothing to give. I needed to

And if it does, what makes it beautiful anyway? I did an Illustration degree 20 years ago and that time one of the worst ways you could describe art was ‘illustrative’. The same goes for the idea of merely creating ‘pretty pictures’. But can we use beauty to our own ends and what’s so wrong

The house I grew up in was always messy. So much so that my standard, default greeting when inviting people in was, ‘Sorry about the mess’, and one friend even called it ‘The Messy House’ (though to be fair the house he lived in was the other end of the tidy spectrum). This was the

The answer is a resounding yes- with a few adjustments. We’re fast coming upon the 6 week summer holidays in the UK, when family time and childcare will take up much more of my time. Although I love not having the pressure to do much, I also really enjoy making artwork and don’t want to

Recently, a second visit to Jim Ede’s house in Cambridge, ‘Kettle’s Yard’, got me thinking about how we live with art and it’s place in our everyday worlds. Kettle Yard is Jim’s masterpiece. A curator, collector, lecturer and author, Jim Ede knew he would never make great art. But he did know how to put

My weekend at Printfest (the annual print fair in Ulverston, Cumbria) got me thinking about how and why people buy art. Many of my sales during the weekend came from repeat buyers and those who had saved up to come to Printfest as a highlight in their year. I also met lots of Instagram followers

Even a week after my artistic retreat, I didn’t feel the need or want to speak as much. I felt quiet. It was a good feeling. And retreat is certainly the word- I backed away from people. Didn’t talk. No need to explain anything. I didn’t need other people to feel good, justified in my