On Easter Sunday, my boyfriend and I decided to brave the atrocious weather and go to Tate Modern to see the newly opened Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition. On this particularly cold, grey, and gloomy Sunday afternoon, we looked forward to seeing the late works of an artist known as the “wild beast” of colour. I’ve seen Matisse’s paintings at…

I have been meaning to write about time and ageing for a while now. What prompted me to do so is the autobiography of Dorothea Tanning, Between Lives: An Artist and Her World (2001), which I am currently reading. I discovered Tanning a few weeks ago, when I was writing a blog post on “artwives” and instantly became fascinated with…

Max Ernst, the author of a collage graphic novel, Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), once said: “Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.” Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing an exhibition devoted to the work of Hannah Höch, a German…

As I’ve been working on the new paintings for last few weeks, I have been reminded of what it is like to be a stereotypical artist – the one whose mood swings, bursts of anger and despair are barely sufferable for anyone in the vicinity. Somehow painting is a much more intense type of work for me than writing, and…

One day you see a strange little girl look at you One day you see a strange little girl feeling blue She’d run to the town one day Leaving home and the country fair Just beware when you’re there, strange little girl She didn’t know how to live in a town that was rough It didn’t take long before she…

Last weekend, I registered for the BP Portrait Award, which is an annual portraiture competition held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It was started in 1979 and was initially sponsored by John Player & Sons, a tobacco company, but British Petroleum took over sponsorship of the competition in 1989 – hence the name. The exhibition opens in June…

After several weeks of writing essay-like posts in which I devour and analyse new and old favourite artists, books, exhibitions etc., I decided to take a little break and write about my current project. I don’t usually share my work-in-progress, nor do I document it step-by-step. For one thing, I get completely immersed in any new artistic venture, so that…

Until very recently, I had been making a conscious effort to separate writing, one of my favourite and most natural ways of expressions, from other areas of my artistic practice. I somehow felt that it was interfering with visual art, my official career path, and that it didn’t have a place in it, besides the “hobby” drawer. But I have…

A few days ago I watched a film which affected me in a way only a handful of films did (recent ones include Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-ever or Jan Komasa’s Suicide Room). From Inside is an animated movie created by John Bergin (credited as writer, producer, director, and animator), based on his graphic novel about a young…

As the New Year approaches, like many people, I have an urge to go through old boxes of non-descript “stuff” and transfer their contents to rubbish/ recycling bags; tick off all the remaining tasks on my to-do list, sort out whatever there is to be sorted, and make plans for the next year. End-of-year clearing immediately makes me think of…

So first, your memory I’ll jog, And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG. — T. S. Eliot As I’m currently preparing a new series of cat drawings for the Kittytees, and had the pleasure of meeting Alice, my good friends’ cat last Saturday, I thought that I could dedicate this post to cats. Cats and artists – what a cliché,…

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of visiting the National Gallery to see the Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 exhibition. I was also very surprised to read devastating reviews of the exhibition on both the Guardian and the Evening Standard websites and a slightly more favourable, yet still very critical, review on the Telegraph website. All three reviewers…