s in the Yellow House in Arles. Interesting to observe the effect each region he worked in had on his palette (from the traditional costumed Breton women to the sensuous naked forms of the Tahitians) and the often a strong sometimes religious or spiritual element as in the ancestors of the Tahiti paintings. The iconic way too in which he depicted the female form, sometimes more goddess, sometimes more demon but almost always sensuous.
Then on to Greenwich to join in the celebrations of Samuel’s third birthday where Nathan joins us later whilst the two little boys are in the bath where they displaced almost more water than is in the tub. Henrietta encourages Isaac to show us how well his pencil skills are developing although I think the Kitchen Chemistry set we brought for him may be a little advanced as he is still only 4 years and eleven months. But they both enjoy constructing the lego Toy Story 3 set ( with Kev’s help) we have bought for Samuel - on opening their books Isaac say 'Oh, another story’. It’s such a joy to see them all. Interesting discussion over dinner about films including “Exit through the Giftshop” by Banksey which I think Nathan had given to Henrietta and Kev at Christmas. It’s about 11.30 when we leave and about 3 am when we get back.
Friday 14.1.11
Phone call from Stephanie at the Hay Hill who runs Art Bridge, web site and organisation to help designers find art for projects they are working on, enquiring to see if I have a particular piece available.
Whilst I’m working on the horse I receive an e mail from Sophia at the Museum to say Wednesday is a good day for Matthew at 3Di to receive it.
Interested to hear on the Radio 4 news at midnight Boris Johnson announcing the artist winners of the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. For 2012 Elmgreen & Dragset from Berlin who have produced a maquette of a boy on a rocking horse covered in gold leaf and 2013 the German artist Katharina Fritsch who will produce a fourteen foot high blue cockerel. She seemed to feel that the image and the ambiguity of the title were somehow evocative of the young men working in London. Having enjoyed recent works like the beautiful white marble sculpture of the disabled artist Alison Lapper pregnant by Marc Quinn and Anthony Gormley’s ever changing One and Other where members of the public could apply to stand on the plinth for an hour, both of which seemed to make a statement and be quite profound, I have to say I feel disappointed that these perhaps seems rather uninspiring to me. Richard’s comment when he s the images was ‘facile and shallow’. Should art aim to have a moral content or desire to change it’s audience?
I did make a painting of a boy on a rocking horse several years ago which was used on the Sigmund Freud book of collected essays in German but the scale was very small by comparison.
Saturday 15.1.11
E mail James at Hay Hill to explain why I haven’t got back to him re his question whether I’ve finished the other self-portrait yet as they have American clients who were sorry to have missed Doubla in my exhibition. Explain that I have been busy working on outstanding commissions. If only there were more hours in the day!
Still trying to tame my horse. When I add a bit more clay to one of his dimensions it means that all the others need balancing up also, although I am doing quite a lot of cutting away too.
Sunday 16.1.11
R’s gone to deliver the big painting to Rob at the art fair in London (where he helps him to hang it), whilst I continue sculpting the clay horse. The aspect that is so very different about sculpture is that being three dimensional it has to work from every angle and of course when one adds to one facet it can alter the view from others particularly above and below! Still adding and cutting away when R returns. A little later get call from Toyah who’s actually trying to ring Robert and got me by mistake. When I enquire about the pantomime she tells me that for the period of a week or so they were not able to get into the theatre and at one stage there was a film crew outside their house as it was at that time the coldest place in the country 19c below freezing. So the washing machine and toilets had frozen. We discuss meeting up at the end of the month.
Back on my horse!
Wednesday 19.1.11
Was sorry to have missed Val Gower, editor of the Friends of Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum Newsletter, when she called to deliver a few copies as I had written a little piece on making the horse maquette and they had included another column on the honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Gloucestershire. By coincidence an envelope from Sophia at the Museum also arrived with a few of the sponsorship leaflets on which my virtually painted maquette appears. It was supposed to go to London today but as I felt I still needed to do more work on the hooves and hind quarters it’s going on Friday instead.
Thursday 20.1.11
E mail from Andy Ginn (director of Creative Academies at Gloucestershire College) to say that I needn’t attend today’s meeting of the several schools who will be working on the Gloucester Station mural project but instead attend a photo shoot later in the month.
This gives me more time on my horse which proves to be really useful as I’m agonising about it until ....
Friday 21.1.11
....6 am when I call it a day. R drives the beast up to London to the workshops of 3D Eye who are going to scale it up to life-size. R texts me just after I get up to say that they both comment on how beautiful it is. He knows this will lift me, as hard as he tries to convince me of the same, I’m still not sure. I suppose its that endless desire to try and perfect that keeps the artist on the endless journey. He’s been reading me ‘The Yellow House’, Martin Gayford’s biography of the period when Vincent and Gaugin spent time there in Arles working, each on their own paintings. Vincent poor man suffered to the extreme with disillusionment. But my afternoon and evening are sheer bliss - I don;t turn the radio on or reply to e mails, just enjoy the solitude and quietude of my studio, starting some new works. On my fourth attempt an idea begins to fire my imagination and creative energy- now the desperate plight to bring it to some vague resemblance before R returns. When he calls from Cornellissens, (my suppliers), where he’s collecting new stretchers and paints, he replies when I tell him I haven’t yet come up with anything I consider worth pursuing I have about two and a half hours to do so before his return. But actually he gives me longer as he then goes to Cork Street to the Hay Hill Gallery for me. It works and on his return he is enthusiastic.
After supper we reply to the most important of the e mails; including one from Helen at the Museum asking if they can reproduce Portrait of the Artist Watching her Children Grow on the website and postcards that they are making in collaboration with three other Museums in the County for school children. And one from St Peter’s High asking if I might go and visit the teacher and students who are working on the Gloucester Railway Station mural project. I’m really touched as they are identifying with my work for the project. Also that Sarah the head of art had been to see my exhibition at the City Museum on Gloucester in 2006.
Saturday 22.1.11
Busy working on all fronts.
Yesterday a piece of music came into my mind as a title for a piece I’d been working on ‘Remember Me’ and today I realised it’s the Jeff Buckley recording of Purcell’s ‘Dido’s Lament’ sung with such passion and sincerity, made all the more poignant by the fact that he died in the Mississippi aged only 30. R plays it and I find the tears rolling down my cheeks. He then plays the Janet Baker recording which although exquisitely beautiful and measured, does not have the same compelling rawness of the Jeff Buckley.
Sunday 23.1.11
R goes to met Rick Rumrell, great friend and collector from Oxford; he flew in from Florida this morning where he practices in St Augustine and Key West as a high powered lawyer, his speciality being maritime law. They are back in time for a late lunch. It’s great to see him in his baseball cap sweater and jeans looking more like the adventurer and avid rock concert attender that he is but tomorrow he will be immaculate in his suit and tie for meetings with clients and solicitors. When we look round the studio he reminds me of all the works he and Jo have, dating back to the early 80s. His eye alights on one work that he say if I decide to sell it he would like first refusal. In the evening R drives him up to London.
Meanwhile whilst working I receive a phone call from the husband of a dear friend/dealer and collector who tells me that there has been a tragedy - she sadly took her own life last week. I find it impossible to believe as she was always so vibrant and happy. When they came into a room it really did light up. He adored her and even bought her one of my paintings for a birthday recently, threw a wonderful party and took her to Paris; they were due to go away tomorrow but we suppose that at the moment she took her life her inner anguish and turmoil was too great to bear. It’s very difficult when you are balanced and of right mind to understand that at the time of such action the mind isn’t functioning in a rational way. It seems all the more poignant as Richard has been reading the Yellow House to me late at night and we have both empathised with poor Vincent’s own inner struggle and now I wonder if my shedding of tears at the Jeff Buckley recording of Remember Me was some sort of premonition. How does one begin to convey the empathy one feels for her husband who is the most delightful man. She was a wonderful woman who did so much to help others, being a trustee on two very special charities. I first got to know her when she was working towards the Women's’ Art Library many years ago.
Monday 24.1.11
Just doing the diary when the phone rings. It’s John Childs Head of Art at Chenderitt School who tells me that he will probably be retiring at the end of next year and so wanted to choose exhibitions that would be meaningful during that time. he asked his wife which previous exhibitions she felt had most impact on the students and she said the PJ Crook; likewise when he asked his staff. He tells me students often use my work in their projects. I’m so touched, my show there at the Michael Heseltine Gallery was in 2006, which was a VERY busy year with exhibitions in Morohashi Museum Japan, City Museum Gloucester, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, Melton Carnegie Museum. He suggests some dates for a six week show all of which seems to overlap other proposed exhibitions but I’m sure I can work something out with the generous help of Professor Ken and Nancy Simmonds’ collection. We’re used to juggling!
Tuesday 25.1.11
Go to get a health check for my health insurance; really pleased as he tells me he would be pleased if he got my score of 91. It measures things like BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose and looks at diet, exercise and lifestyle. Then we go and look at spectacle frames for R. It’s interesting how they can alter the way you look to such a degree. There are some really nice round ones that he has his eye on but when he tries them on they are rather small and I comment that they tend to make him look cross which is very out of character. He thinks I am exaggerating until I put them on and he sees what I mean.
Back to work in studio. Receive lovely film from Neil at the National Star College of their students working with dance students from the University in a three day workshop given by StopGAP. It’s beautiful.
Wednesday 26.1.11
Start another small work whilst contemplating my next move on the Gandhi commission.
Call from Rick saying how good it had been to see us and thanking Richard for collecting him and taking him back to London, where he’s been having high powered meetings. Asks me if I’ve thought about the small painting he would like me to do to help complete their collection which has several large pieces.
Thursday 27.1.11
E mail from John Childs in reply to mine, saying it would be brilliant if I can, as I hope, fit in an exhibition there in September to coincide with the Brian Sinfield show in Burford. How could I refuse after he told me that I’d had the biggest effect on his students. How fortunate I am to be able to use borrowed works from Professor Ken and Nancy Simmonds’ collection.
Yippee! call from John W to say he’s already made the big frames for me. He is such a wonderful man, I’m so lucky to have him on board.
I just opened my Tate newsletter with diary of events and am thumbing through the pages when suddenly spot Nathan’s name under a photograph which I recognise to be his installation form the A Foundation exhibit the summer before last. It was in collaboration with Tai Shani who had choreographed a performance within it. What a lovely surprise. I ring him to ask if he had seen it and he hadn’t but tells me that the video he had art directed of Adele is now number 1 in the music video charts. It’s a fantastic piece with installations of hundreds of glasses of water filling a whole floor which vibrate to the drum beat, broken china a cardboard city ablaze on a table the most exquisite dance sequence in powdered French chalk etc. etc. We also notice that Jamie Cullum uses Nathan’s exploding piano on his web site, on posters, bags as well as a CD and DVD so we’ve just ordered one of each.
Friday 28.1.11
Late afternoon we drive over to Gloucestershire College where Richard Graham, MP for Gloucester, had organised a photo shoot to promote the mural project for Gloucester Station which under Andy Ginn’s guidance (director of the creative academies) is being undertaken by schools in Gloucester and GC. In the group are
Wednesday 19.1.11
Was sorry to have missed Val Gower, editor of the Friends of Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum Newsletter, when she called to deliver a few copies as I had written a little piece on making the horse maquette and they had included another column on the honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Gloucestershire. By coincidence an envelope from Sophia at the Museum also arrived with a few of the sponsorship leaflets on which my virtually painted maquette appears. It was supposed to go to London today but as I felt I still needed to do more work on the hooves and hind quarters it’s going on Friday instead.
Thursday 20.1.11
E mail from Andy Ginn (director of Creative Academies at Gloucestershire College) to say that I needn’t attend today’s meeting of the several schools who will be working on the Gloucester Station mural project but instead attend a photo shoot later in the month.
This gives me more time on my horse which proves to be really useful as I’m agonising about it until ....
Friday 21.1.11
....6 am when I call it a day. R drives the beast up to London to the workshops of 3D Eye who are going to scale it up to life-size. R texts me just after I get up to say that they both comment on how beautiful it is. He knows this will lift me, as hard as he tries to convince me of the same, I’m still not sure. I suppose its that endless desire to try and perfect that keeps the artist on the endless journey. He’s been reading me ‘The Yellow House’, Martin Gayford’s biography of the period when Vincent and Gaugin spent time there in Arles working, each on their own paintings. Vincent poor man suffered to the extreme with disillusionment. But my afternoon and evening are sheer bliss - I don;t turn the radio on or reply to e mails, just enjoy the solitude and quietude of my studio, starting some new works. On my fourth attempt an idea begins to fire my imagination and creative energy- now the desperate plight to bring it to some vague resemblance before R returns. When he calls from Cornellissens, (my suppliers), where he’s collecting new stretchers and paints, he replies when I tell him I haven’t yet come up with anything I consider worth pursuing I have about two and a half hours to do so before his return. But actually he gives me longer as he then goes to Cork Street to the Hay Hill Gallery for me. It works and on his return he is enthusiastic.
After supper we reply to the most important of the e mails; including one from Helen at the Museum asking if they can reproduce Portrait of the Artist Watching her Children Grow on the website and postcards that they are making in collaboration with three other Museums in the County for school children. And one from St Peter’s High asking if I might go and visit the teacher and students who are working on the Gloucester Railway Station mural project. I’m really touched as they are identifying with my work for the project. Also that Sarah the head of art had been to see my exhibition at the City Museum on Gloucester in 2006.
Saturday 22.1.11
Busy working on all fronts.
Yesterday a piece of music came into my mind as a title for a piece I’d been working on ‘Remember Me’ and today I realised it’s the Jeff Buckley recording of Purcell’s ‘Dido’s Lament’ sung with such passion and sincerity, made all the more poignant by the fact that he died in the Mississippi aged only 30. R plays it and I find the tears rolling down my cheeks. He then plays the Janet Baker recording which although exquisitely beautiful and measured, does not have the same compelling rawness of the Jeff Buckley.
Sunday 23.1.11
R goes to met Rick Rumrell, great friend and collector from Oxford; he flew in from Florida this morning where he practices in St Augustine and Key West as a high powered lawyer, his speciality being maritime law. They are back in time for a late lunch. It’s great to see him in his baseball cap sweater and jeans looking more like the adventurer and avid rock concert attender that he is but tomorrow he will be immaculate in his suit and tie for meetings with clients and solicitors. When we look round the studio he reminds me of all the works he and Jo have, dating back to the early 80s. His eye alights on one work that he say if I decide to sell it he would like first refusal. In the evening R drives him up to London.
Meanwhile whilst working I receive a phone call from the husband of a dear friend/dealer and collector who tells me that there has been a tragedy - she sadly took her own life last week. I find it impossible to believe as she was always so vibrant and happy. When they came into a room it really did light up. He adored her and even bought her one of my paintings for a birthday recently, threw a wonderful party and took her to Paris; they were due to go away tomorrow but we suppose that at the moment she took her life her inner anguish and turmoil was too great to bear. It’s very difficult when you are balanced and of right mind to understand that at the time of such action the mind isn’t functioning in a rational way. It seems all the more poignant as Richard has been reading the Yellow House to me late at night and we have both empathised with poor Vincent’s own inner struggle and now I wonder if my shedding of tears at the Jeff Buckley recording of Remember Me was some sort of premonition. How does one begin to convey the empathy one feels for her husband who is the most delightful man. She was a wonderful woman who did so much to help others, being a trustee on two very special charities. I first got to know her when she was working towards the Women's’ Art Library many years ago.
Monday 24.1.11
Just doing the diary when the phone rings. It’s John Childs Head of Art at Chenderitt School who tells me that he will probably be retiring at the end of next year and so wanted to choose exhibitions that would be meaningful during that time. he asked his wife which previous exhibitions she felt had most impact on the students and she said the PJ Crook; likewise when he asked his staff. He tells me students often use my work in their projects. I’m so touched, my show there at the Michael Heseltine Gallery was in 2006, which was a VERY busy year with exhibitions in Morohashi Museum Japan, City Museum Gloucester, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, Melton Carnegie Museum. He suggests some dates for a six week show all of which seems to overlap other proposed exhibitions but I’m sure I can work something out with the generous help of Professor Ken and Nancy Simmonds’ collection. We’re used to juggling!
Tuesday 25.1.11
Go to get a health check for my health insurance; really pleased as he tells me he would be pleased if he got my score of 91. It measures things like BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose and looks at diet, exercise and lifestyle. Then we go and look at spectacle frames for R. It’s interesting how they can alter the way you look to such a degree. There are some really nice round ones that he has his eye on but when he tries them on they are rather small and I comment that they tend to make him look cross which is very out of character. He thinks I am exaggerating until I put them on and he sees what I mean.
Back to work in studio. Receive lovely film from Neil at the National Star College of their students working with dance students from the University in a three day workshop given by StopGAP. It’s beautiful.
Wednesday 26.1.11
Start another small work whilst contemplating my next move on the Gandhi commission.
Call from Rick saying how good it had been to see us and thanking Richard for collecting him and taking him back to London, where he’s been having high powered meetings. Asks me if I’ve thought about the small painting he would like me to do to help complete their collection which has several large pieces.
Thursday 27.1.11
E mail from John Childs in reply to mine, saying it would be brilliant if I can, as I hope, fit in an exhibition there in September to coincide with the Brian Sinfield show in Burford. How could I refuse after he told me that I’d had the biggest effect on his students. How fortunate I am to be able to use borrowed works from Professor Ken and Nancy Simmonds’ collection.
Yippee! call from John W to say he’s already made the big frames for me. He is such a wonderful man, I’m so lucky to have him on board.
I just opened my Tate newsletter with diary of events and am thumbing through the pages when suddenly spot Nathan’s name under a photograph which I recognise to be his installation form the A Foundation exhibit the summer before last. It was in collaboration with Tai Shani who had choreographed a performance within it. What a lovely surprise. I ring him to ask if he had seen it and he hadn’t but tells me that the video he had art directed of
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