‘Did you sleep OK?’ ‘Yes. How about you?’ ‘More than five hours. It’s the most I’ve had for weeks.’ ‘Me too.’ ‘Do you think the bells are about to start ringing?’ ‘Half past six? It might be a bit early. Apparently they always ring them on a Sunday though.’ ‘It was funny when Fiona became [...]
When I first met Matt, my lovely artist and art critic husband to be, I shyly confessed to being a birdwatcher. ‘I know it’s a bit strange and nerdy’ I said, ‘but I’ve liked it ever since I was a teenager.’ ‘Don’t worry’ he said racking his brain for precedents of behaviour of this kind [...]
Earlier this week, as I worked, the phone trilled. Multiple messages told me there was an old picture of Matt and David Bowie in the Guardian. ‘Have you seen it yet?’ ‘No’ I said. This morning, as I prepared to leave the house for the gallery, a chat box popped up on the computer screen, [...]
In its finishing stages, I realised that all along, unnoticed by me, our show has a consistent and logical theme. While we worked, the components — paintings, wallpaper and mosaic — seemed more or less disparate. Wanting to create a sense of visual unity, I came up with formal correlates between one element and another [...]
These are the last few days in which to prepare our show ‘Pattern Industry’. We are giving a talk to students at the Slade the day after the show opens. As we make amendments to the paintings, we discuss our practice and try to guess the sort of questions we might be asked. The talk [...]
Retrieved text messages from 2005, a mosaic of impressions. I am posting here only texts I sent (not ones I received) so no confidences have been broken. The context is a trip to Australia, where Matt was invited to open an art fair. The texts begin when we arrive at our stop-over destination of Singapore. [...]
In between arguments and stopping periodically for tea and toast we are working and talking about how to get across what the paintings are about. Matt thinks people will find it hard to see why the paintings aren’t nostalgia for a moment in the early twentieth century when painting was interested in science and colour [...]
It is 2.30 in the afternoon, and I am exhausted. I didn’t sleep at all well last night, and neither did Matt. He is a little tense. Throughout the night something would wake him and he would demand ‘ What are you doing? You’re blogging again. Stop blogging.’ I would reassure him that I wasn’t [...]
A problem has developed in the Biggs Collings household. Matt is jealous of my blog. Every time I go near my computer, which like anyone in the modern world, I do throughout the day, for a multitude of reasons, he says ‘Stop blogging. Our show is going to fail because of your blog. You are [...]
I was brought up on a farm, called Groves, in Peasmarsh. There was a well under the kitchen floor. The roof was thatched, and alive with bats at night. It was a poultry farm, given to my father by his parents, who were Irish emigres. The house was Elizabethan, with uneven latticed panes much thicker [...]