I was giving a lecture to students at Vassar not long ago. Working with the students’ autobiographies, I invited a dance student, a music student who brought his saxophone, and an art student to join me on stage. I asked the dancer to improvise some movement from a tuck position on the floor. I asked the saxophone player to accompany…

One of the most difficult relationship in our life is the one we have with ourselves. The difficulty of it lies in the ability to accept the things about ourselves which we cannot change, whilst making the effort to change the things we can. The balance of maintaining discipline without beating ourselves up for the smallest failure is the hardest…

I have recently returned from a really good holiday in Poland. So good, in fact, that I discarded the original return ticket and stayed for another week and a half. My definition of a great holiday is one that allows me to recharge physically, emotionally and intellectually so that I come back home with new energy and ideas. This trip…

A while ago, I wrote a post on departing from a safe zone in which I stressed the importance of challenging oneself despite the temptation to stick to what we know how to do well and what the audience likes. Today I want to write about the importance of returning to the comfort zone. Sounds like a contradiction? Well, it…

During that winter we all told our most colourful stories. Max was especially happy at this, spooking everyone with his hexes: coincidences, omens, funny, freakish happenings, all cleaving a rather sinister zigzag behind him like the path of a tornado, dogging his step from one opening to another. Curious tricks played themselves out around his pictures, and brought him up each time,…

  In February, inspired by Steve Pavlina’s blog post, I took a 30-day break from Facebook, which I have already mentioned briefly in one of my recent blog posts on solitude and routine. I was keen to share this positive experience and my reflections on the impact of Facebook on an artist’s life, and now, after a few weeks of…

I am currently preparing for a joint exhibition with Oxford-based painter Andris Wood at the Gasoline Rooms gallery in March 2014. The body of work I am preparing moves me away from previous painting ventures into a more experimental territory where fine arts meets the graphic novel. This is exciting and terrifying at the same time, and the experience of…

Painting sex in the East Yesterday I went to the Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art exhibition at the British Museum. Translated literally, the word shunga means spring pictures (apparently “spring” is a euphemism for sex) and refers to erotic colour prints, painted hand-scrolls and printed books made between 1600 and 1900 in Japan. Despite a few periods of…