First look, the sea, comfort

In the year one, our tutor brought us to an exhibition. I can't remember the title, but there was this phrase somewhere: 'White is the colour of pain', or maybe it was 'The colour of pain is white'. I remember the artist's name as if I was there now - Mladen Stilinovic.

It was the first exhibition where I really learned to look. I could have picked a far worse place to start. I remember his whites had hues and textures that I had never imagined. I remember the freshness of my own gaze; not knowing anything about art. I realize I'll never look at anything that way again. Knowledge, once acquired, only deepens. But I remember what it feels like. An exciting, private, almost erotic awakening... and I can picture the creamy light of the gallery on that day, years ago.

I have never been able to capture in my own work even a shade of that heightened experience. Attached to a tactile and sensual world, I still like things too pretty.

Sometimes you may have read a passage by a writer you think is excellent, and you realize that not one word or sentence in there is superfluous. The best of anything is like that - no sleight of hand.

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I've been waiting for an image to get clearer and clearer for a show in August. It's been brewing at the back of my head. Circles, from a fixed point.

The bottom of the sea is death, the surface, life.

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Behold the sad lil puppy
Pining away for the sea
It should have been born
With gills and flippers on
But twas not to be

-E.H.