I wake up and it has snowed. The house is washed with a peculiar whiteness and is utterly still except for two crows fighting in the field. It is like Christmas day, I suppose, surprisingly bright and mundane ( Read more... )

This room becomes a light box in the early afternoon. I bask in it while the baby seagulls tear the tree outside to shreds ( Read more... )

Gladstone and yew, this terrible place we go through, the train shaking, the light coming in, weak and ill-coloured. Boats overturned in choppy water, little green bridge, a hoax and balls of nests in trees ( Read more... )

The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.- Louis Kahn ( Read more... )

It is nearly two o'clock. My sister Tess is in Amsterdam now. I have my dissertation to write, I don't know what to say. I dream about going somewhere golden. There was always a certain feeling about life that I thought I would have - I see it in a painting or hear it in a piece of music. I keep thinking I am just not in the right place, but it isn ( Read more... )

Everything is very simple. Day one, we do this. Day two, we do something else entirely. There are no junctions between days. Just the wonder of a room full of paintings you have not seen before ( Read more... )

I am hopefully going to Basel in April with Tania and the others for the Holbein exhibition, it's very exciting. And then of course there is the exhibition of his English portraits at the Tate later on in the year! Has anybody been to Colmar? I'd like to see the Isenheim altarpiece while I'm nearby but am not sure if its worth staying there ( Read more... )

In the play, the girl says, why is it that when I remember the garden it is so magical? It was hell back then, wasn't it hell ( Read more... )

We take down the tree while outside the garden is flooding. There are boxes for the wooden animals; ostriches, elephants, giraffes, pigs and lions. In the room above, the borders are papered with horses, one in every five is lame. In the room beside it, I decide I will never be unhappy again. There is a moment of utter clarity after the shot, when ( Read more... )

The fields between Bath and Bristol are waterlogged, all you can see for miles is a reflection of the sky. In places it is clear and wide, uninterrupted, as if the world has tipped. In others, the grass grows leggy and thin through the water. What would it be like if the sky were brown, with waterbirds dipping and sheep for clouds?