We live in spaces and then they live in us. Lights out for that old flat we were in for 17 years. In the last few days of being there I sentimentally found myself conscious of doing things for the last time, touching certain things, savouring certain views.

During our time there I only made a few paintings and drawings in the flat of the flat, but it was a crucial and more important than all the studio spaces I have had. Of course it was, for it was here that the boys grew up, grew into themselves here, and we did too in many ways. It saw the best of times and the worst of times. It bore witness, as if the experiences - painful and joyous - have been absorbed into the walls. I was thinking of issues that have had to be discussed, tackled and faced and sitting for so long that rooms went from raking morning light to dark night, as if you were part of a time lapse film, you sitting still where the light changed around you. I love sitting in a darkening room merging with the furniture, like in that great Munch painting Night in Saint-Cloud. I’ve looked at it in the museum in Oslo but I wasn’t really seeing it.

Of course you are an artist even when you are not making art; most of the time I am a painter but not painting a painting, these times - in between times- when I am living (real life is it?)- are of course more, muchly much more, important. (But painting is living too though.)
Looking and seeing, framing things, absorbing particularities of colour and light, feeling the surface of things, feeling the weight and volume of things, and working through the emotional feelings. Seeing things over time. The time in between painting. Real life.