29 March 2026
West facing (working title): had this one turned around for a while and I think it is finally somewhat resolved. The core of the image came from standing at the threshold to the yard in my house. The greenery at the end of it is like a portal for wildlife, especially for cats, and maybe that has been part of the fascination. But it must also be something about the emotional perception of a repeatedly visited place changing over time. Prunella Clough: ...the sense of place is crucial for me and involves sensations other than the purely optical ones of observation. Although they coexist, of course. Which is perhaps why I spent a lot of time with John Lees's work during the making of this one (especially his painting Bathtub (1972-2010)—as the dates imply, it matured and morphed over close to three decades, which he explains in a charming talk he did for the New York Studio School that you can find easily on YouTube). That link between the optical and the metaphysical; as my floaters start to visit more often with the sun slowly emerging here in London, I'm thinking often of different stripes of visual noise and their implications. Of how pieces of the perceiver can break off and join the perceived, both intentionally and spontaneously.