Watching paint

" You're supposed to be mixing it, not bloody photographing it."

He just doesn't understand the creative impulse. There are good reasons for mixing your own paint. You get the same practical buttercream colour ( I refuse to call it magnolia ) every time, any time, by adding one tube of raw siena to five litres of any white paint, in theory, or at least the same tint if not the same shade. We use this on woodwork and ceilings throughout the house. The other good reason is the fun of doing it.

You squirt the tube into the paint and pretend you're Jackson Pollock,


Then you stir it a bit, and maybe you find a face in it,

swirl it round a bit more,

and a bit more,

and a bit more still,

give up with the bamboo stick and decide you'll sacrifice another kitchen whisk, to get a smooth emulsion.

For at last, after ten years, we are decorating the living room. The problem is, as soon as a space becomes even remotely usable it is used, becomes colonised with the effects of living. Bookshelves are inhabited by books before they can be varnished, and you can become quite used to plasterboard with just a skim of gesso on it...

Tom dislikes painting, so I do quite a lot of it. He can do wallpaper.

And despite his sometimes disparaging attitude to my artistic tendencies, of his own accord he got two long vertical frames of five windows each for me to put ten of my photographs into, to hang one each side of the wall light. Which is a nice kind of icing on the cake.