October is my favourite month not least because it's my birthday but also because the light is warmer and there's a sense of something beautiful starting. At the start of the month I spent some glorious days in Italy eating and cooking with my sketchbook to hand.
But now I'm back in the studio and I've been getting ready to launch my new collection of Lover’s Eye pins – more on that below! – and finishing a painting called Rest a While Before Passing Through for the show memento Mori at Andelli Gallery which opens on Halloween.
But now I'm back in the studio and I've been getting ready to launch my new collection of Lover’s Eye pins – more on that below! – and finishing a painting called Rest a While Before Passing Through for the show memento Mori at Andelli Gallery which opens on Halloween.
This month I released my new collection of pins at Dover Street Market. There is a selection of little charms to choose to put on your pin; one of my hand-painted miniature Lover’s Eye pendants, a precious silver goblin by Happy Belly Man or a beautiful silver tooth by Alma Berrow.
And also... some snippets from my sketchbook in Italy…
Will peeling potatoes
Men chatting and chatting in the square
FROM MY STUDIO WALL
This painting, Rest a While Before Passing Through it is a painting about things I have lost. As if I put them down somewhere along the way and thought ‘I’ll pick that up later’ but never did. People who’ve gone, fantasies, little obsessions. It is a Still Life which collects together these things, now buried the past, and celebrates them.
WOULD YOU RATHER? WITH ALMA BERROW
What is your favourite way to eat potatoes? Potatoes are my desert island dish – I’ll eat them any way they’re presented to me. Mashed might be at the top of the charts…I think that’s down to the amount of butter you can hide in it.
What recipe do you cook for your loved ones? My go-to dish usually involves confit tomatoes, a steamed green of any kind, and—because it’s that season—Ottolenghis homemade polenta with a slice of roasted pumpkin. The green-skinned Italian pumpkins sealed with red wax are my favourite; they taste like a giant chestnut.
What do you cook when you’re sick? I’m actually down with a bug right now, and my boyfriend made me an Irish stew—pretty damn steamy and dreamy. I’ve also got a pan of ginger and lemon bubbling away on the stove as I write this.
What is studio lunch? Oh, I’m bad bad not good in the studio… I get lost in work and often forget about food. Usually, a cup of tea, a caramel chocolate biscuit, and a bowl of supermarket soup will keep me going.
What is your favourite way to eat potatoes? Potatoes are my desert island dish – I’ll eat them any way they’re presented to me. Mashed might be at the top of the charts…I think that’s down to the amount of butter you can hide in it.
What recipe do you cook for your loved ones? My go-to dish usually involves confit tomatoes, a steamed green of any kind, and—because it’s that season—Ottolenghis homemade polenta with a slice of roasted pumpkin. The green-skinned Italian pumpkins sealed with red wax are my favourite; they taste like a giant chestnut.
What do you cook when you’re sick? I’m actually down with a bug right now, and my boyfriend made me an Irish stew—pretty damn steamy and dreamy. I’ve also got a pan of ginger and lemon bubbling away on the stove as I write this.
What is studio lunch? Oh, I’m bad bad not good in the studio… I get lost in work and often forget about food. Usually, a cup of tea, a caramel chocolate biscuit, and a bowl of supermarket soup will keep me going.