Behold the child
Stages, entrances and exits,
velvet stage curtains,
blood,
passive aggression,
school uniform, white gloves,
navy knickers,
The plumber
He says he needs to stay
and repair the damage she has caused
with her brazenness.
Her heart is flushed through
with red rust.
Grockles, The System and the Guzzledown Brixham Connection
Dad was writing the script for The System, directed by Michael Winner and starring Oliver Reed. Dad listened to Freddy, incorporated the word ‘grockle’ into the script, becoming the first documented text of the word grockle for holidaymaker.
Heard the one about the gynaecologist and the artist? (Finalist - Touchlines of Fortitude Exhibition 2025)
Once I was a young artist raised in the sixties and living the seventies. To the art school came the man raised in the twenties and living the Reformation
Travelling Victorian Pennies
To enter a shop alone as a mid-twentieth century child is as complex as a peace treaty. They are not friendly spaces. They have codes as mysterious as going unarmed into the lair of a wild animal, challenged to fight in a duel, ordered to dance a minuet, negotiate a house sale, perform a ritual of gift exchanges in a foreign land and language, show deference and anticipate nervously a change in the rules of queuing, dependent on who is serving you today, who is behind you, who your parents are, the size of your house, your friendships, your religion, which pub your parents frequents or do they frequent pubs, what you are wearing, how your hair is cut. The shopkeeper may as well point a gun, demand I do not pass the threshold and shoot me dead.
Our Time is Now, Now and Then
Inside art school note books and sketch pads, in the margins, I see doodles, scribbles, sketches, prose, essays, aspirations, chronicles, valedictory huff and puff, drawings of the 'perfect' eye, boys' names, plans, rescues, defeats. I can see subliminal messages to the future, look what you were, became, are, and how you became you.
Stealing from ghosts
I stole a little black cape with sequins on the shoulders that I remember wearing when I went with my mum to the fishmongers on the fish quay, no occasion too small to dress up.
A black satin blouse that was a bit tight but all the better for it.
The sin eaters
Doorways were a feature of this space. Caught in a corridor, I stood before the one for the studio and glanced at another; the guest room. Who are the guests of the artist when he is away from home; living in this flat away for the anchor and the source? Away from the summer lawns, replacing them with something, someone, people that held him hostage for weeks
Hey Hey We were the Monkees and I was a Believer
I became her foot soldier. She taught me the facts of life on the way to school. She got it a bit wrong but we muddled through and I let her take the credit.
My imaginary friends
This imaginary one was bullish and argumentative. I admired it immensely.
Nick’s Gift reviewed by Paul Green and Robert Garnham
A seventies adolescence in all its pains, pleasures and revelations. But there’s also razor -sharp contemporary satire and humour in various shades of black.
"Immaculate conceptualism and a Ruskin ***k"
if you show people how contemporary design WORKS and how it all works TOGETHER then not only do you sell more pottery but you sell for others, more furniture, more paintings, more good wallpaper, more good glass.
Milton Head Pottery, Geoparks and the Guzzledown Connection
‘the peace and serenity of this little town’. This, he said, was essential for him to later become a success as a writer.
Suffer little children for art
As a child I was approached at a Puffin Book Club event with friends, and we were groomed long distance, by the children’s author William Mayne…
Still being ridiculous in the 21st century
Surrealism allowed women to uniquely express their experiences; a woman could have been tried by a male judge and burnt as a witch for such practices in the eighteenth century.
Can a male critic get the perspective of a female Surrealist?
You don’t like my painting
Art is a language and we are all capable of embracing and learning each other’s language while still knowing what we like.
A Pome for Rebecca
The occasional art book, signed with love and metaphorically flung at my head.