It’s been nearly two months since the exhibition at the Old Fire Station happened and after a few weeks catching up with normality (if there is such a thing) and a short trip to London to see friends and family and some art (Gormley and Freud at the RA and Kollwitz at the British Museum – all fantastic), I am now looking to take the work to other venues and to develop/add to it. If anyone has any suggestions of possible places, please let me know.

While I was otherwise engaged, Troy Slater of West Walls Artists and Evan Rhodri Davies of The Often Herd, among other things, were creating a video and soundtrack, which you can see at https://youtu.be/KZ7kOt8pNng. I had wanted some kind of record of the exhibition but this video has turned out to be much more than that. Huge thanks to Troy and Evan!

Looking at the Freud self-portraits hung in chronological order, it struck me that his style and medium aged like skin or the bark of a tree. The very early drawings and paintings sharply drawn and smooth, almost translucent glazes of paint; the later portraits, as we all know, made with coarser brushes and meatier paint, show the direction of every stroke of the hogshair. And then in the work from his last years, the curdled paint so piled up and lumpy, the surface becomes gnarled and warty, deformed, arthritic, only resolving into a vivid figure at a distance – the distance necessary for aging eyes?

Enough. Time to send off some enquiries – and get back to painting …