I’m delighted to share the news that one of my paintings has been selected for this year’s Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

The Discerning Eye is an annual exhibition with an unusual format. All the works are relatively small — no larger than 20 × 20 inches (50 × 50 cm) — and available for purchase. Six guest selectors, drawn from different areas of the art world and beyond, each curate their own selection. This year’s selectors include the actor Hugh Bonneville, and my painting was chosen by Jon Sharples, a lawyer specialising in art and intellectual property.

Some of you may know that this image has another life: as the cover of my recently published poetry collection, Dear Dog.

The collection brings together poems I’ve written over the years, and it’s lovely to see the painting and the book connected in this way. If you’re interested in a copy of Dear Dog, please do get in touch. It’s available directly from me, as well as from Barnes Bookshop in London, and Spoonbill and Sugartown books in Williamsburg, New York.

I’d be delighted if you could make it to the Mall Galleries to see the exhibition. Details as follows:

13–21 November 2026
10am–5pm daily

Mall Galleries (The Mall), London

It’s exhibition time, and you are warmly invited to my studio in Barnes. This year I am taking part in the inaugural Barnes Artists Open studio, which will feature about 40 artists from SW13, and a huge variety of art. I have a large body of brand new work, much of it inspired by my garden – all FOR SALE. Please scroll down for a few samples. I also attach a map of Barnes showing the location of all the artists.

Sat 6 – Sun 7 June 2026
11am – 6pm
49 Lonsdale Road
London SW13 9JR

Please RSVP.

Dear all, it was my great pleasure, shortly before Christmas, to be interviewed by the wonderful Petra Sittig for her podcast ‘The Artist’s Voice’. Below is a link to the interview in which we talk about childhood inspiration, how (nearly) everyone is an artist, David Hockney’s love of rain falling in puddles – and many other topics. Petra is a consummate interviewer of painters, architects, sculptors, musicians – all kinds of creative people and I highly recommend her YouTube channel. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts.

My first TV interview

Greetings all. Back in April I was contacted by RTS (Swiss national tv), who needed a contemporary portrait painter to do a demo and an interview on the occasion of the Angelica Kauffman exhibition at the Royal Academy. Here is a link to said interview: I appear about 1min 30 secs in.

https://www.rts.ch/info/culture/arts-visuels/2024/article/la-peintre-grisonne-angelica-kauffmann-exposee-a-la-royal-academy-of-arts-de-londres-28462678.html

Angelica Kauffman, (whose mother was Swiss), was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy. She was a very talented painter, and is perhaps not as well known as she ought to be. The exhibition at the RA is on until Sunday this week, 30 June. I do urge you to see it if you have the opportunity.

Here are a few of my favourite Angelica Kauffman images (though the photographs really don’t do her justice). Although she’s officially classed as a neoclassical painter, she loved Rembrandt and Titian, and you can see that in her work. I particularly like her very candid self-portraits, but she was also great at painting other people, like her friend Sir Joshua Reynolds (see below).

Lastly, if you’d like to discuss sitting for a portrait, don’t hesitate to contact me.