This year I’ve presented several workshops on art writing and I always start with The Wounded Deer (1946). I open up PowerPoint and there she is. Frida Kahlo’s head painted on the body of a young stag running through the forest, as nimbly as it can on those tiny, delicate […]

I woke up the other morning, started scrolling my phone, and landed on an image of a gigantic Blue Ted roaming the flaxen countryside. Blue Ted had an enormous head and a rotund belly, but from his bright blue furry arms protruded human hands and from his blue furry legs […]

‘I thought I could work on my anger’, I said. I sat on the red couch and looked at my therapist earnestly. He is a kind, thin, graceful man who does tai chi. His pale-blue eyes twinkled like Santa Claus’s. ‘I also have a lot of creative blocks’, I said. […]

I can see why they didn’t put it in the show. It’s not made from our moment. It’s not a #metoo-era masterpiece. Quite the opposite, in fact. But there are no facts, only a lithograph called The Felled Trunk by J.H. Moesman that I can’t unsee. He made it in […]

This is the talk I gave for Speakers Corner: Art for Art’s Sake at the Auckland Writers Festival in 2022. Today I am going to tell you about: a picklea piece of paperand a hinge. But first I am going to tell you about nothing. I once gave an old […]