My Father the Clown
Everyone has a crisis of some sort at sixteen, right? I’m relieved to say I didn’t end up acting like a clown, but I did paint a portrait of my father as one. This was not my initial plan when I decided on ‘performance’ as my theme for an extended art project in school – […]
The Act You’ve Known for All These Years
“John Lennon came into the NME [New Musical Express] to see me in disguise. He’d got a false beard and he was dressed in the most ragged clothes you’ve ever seen. He said, ‘I don’t want to be recognised by anybody. Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’ We went to Julie’s and sat
love letter from home
no it’s not what you think it is; not batter rolled in a tight embrace every lunar new year (but you hear the lid slipping off already, so it could be). it’s adding the clock and weather apps as widgets (go to bed, wear extra layers, you know we can’t take the cold). it’s receiving […
Help, I’m A Highly Sensitive Person, Get Me Out Of Here!
Every good self-help book has a checklist somewhere within its pages. It’s a maxim that some personal development writers have ignored to their peril, whilst others have readily embraced. Researchers and co-authors Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo belong to the latter camp. With the part self-help m
Medieval Clowns in the Style of Matisse, and Other Works Not By Me
Choose any subject matter, any medium, any colour palette, any artist’s style. Now go! This is what DALL-E offers. A ‘text-to-image’ generator, this artificial intelligence programme is for images what ChatGPT is for text, and it is unsurprisingly blaring a big Code Red in the art world. Type
After the Storm
They have black tongues, arteries which are rumoured to pumpcinders and tar. As they summon the gale, words drip like treaclefrom their blaspheming mouths, weaving a tale of two horses who gallop the town: one black, the other white,like a negative impression. With eyelashes wet from the storm,they
Anarchic Humanism: Alice Neel at the Barbican Art Gallery
Alice Neel sits naked in front of me. In oil-paint form, that is, but the effect is no less striking for it. The artist’s first self-portrait, created when she was in her 80s, epitomises the irreverence, the subversion and the brash humanity that pulses within her work. These urges are somewhat te
A Fantastic Alchemy: In Conversation with Composer Rachel Portman
There’s a video circulating on the internet, of Lord Voldemort’s return in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Ralph Fiennes holds aloft a reptilian skull, eye sockets sunken like trenches. Except Patrick Doyle’s sinister, sweeping score has been replaced by the synthesised tickle of Sp
