22/04/2024

My studio is 12 mikes north of Norwich, so I don’t expect a torrent of visitors; it’s an opportunity to trumpet my work to the wider world, and any flesh-and-blood visitors are the icing on the cake.

The week kicked off with a long visit from a curator and as she was my first visitor’s she got deluged with a torrent of ideas. I’d just drawn a new mind map and everything felt fresh again. Last autumn’s residency in Split is continuing to yield ideas as I make work and read.

For instance, the octopus head I had given Diocletian ( green bust in the foreground) has led me to think about Mycenaean jars decirated with jaunty smiley octopuses, an animal the ancient Greeks likened to the womb with its fluid shape and tenracles that supposedly ran into the limbs.

Most fruitful was discussion with visitors (all artists, except for a couple of cyclists who thought the garden school had a study day) about how to stand the sculptures up. They’re not really sculptures as they are flat, but they’re not really paintings because I’ve gone off the word.

So I have two new ways forward to consider - junking the plinths so the work sits on the floor directly, with a discrete steel stand or maybe hung from the ceiling on fine cords.

Again many thanks to my visitors!