What I especially like about the concept of The Harrowing of Hell is that Jesus needs to be busy busy. He can’t actually be dead during those three days. He has to rescue all those poor souls in hell since … Read More
Did you ever do something good as a child only to be told stuff like “you’ll get your reward in Heaven”? No thanks, especially if a nun is on reward duty; it will be slim pickings for the protestants … Read More
“What is art, Herr Schwitters” “What isn’t?” This was my opening quote in the art history exam in 1973. Kurt, neatly summing up the conceptualist ideology of 1970s art schools. For all of its egalitarian symbolism, Kurt’s quote was embedded … Read More
In 2021 I was asked to contribute to an exhibition in Hereford. I researched the year 1971 for the painting ‘The anchorhold 1971’ I used a version of a toy theatre and painted anchorholds in the theatre boxes, women kept … Read More
My first imaginary friend was a bluebird, directly lifted from a favourite storybook, with the power of speech and flight, much needed in large families. Another was a baby although I had a baby sister. This imaginary one was … Read More
‘At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.’ On the 7th April I’ll … Read More
In 1971 I was a teenager raging at the front door and sneaking in by the back door. I caught buses in dark bus stations and lived near owly fields and lanes. I took lifts, to stretch out moment between … Read More
NICK’S GIFT Review by Paul Green Becky Nuttall’s first collection is a delight to read. The poems range from vivid but unsentimental epiphanies of a sixties childhood to powerful evocations of a seventies adolescence in all its … Read More
I inherited my father’s art school portfollio, letters written to his closest friend, poems, lists and journals. I have the lovely poems he wrote for me, his funny postcards and random letters. I have disposed of … Read More
“Momento mori – love, I love’
Once I was a young artist raised in the sixties and living the seventies. To the art school came the man raised in the twenties and living the Reformation; he is the assessor. He sallies forth into the studio and … Read More
The Irish nuns in our convent favoured the term of abuse ‘ridiculous’ or ‘ridiccaless’ in their vernacular. ‘Don’t be ridiculous Rebecca’ when I questioned anything outside their dogma, tradition or values. Not being a Catholic, and having arty parents, I … Read More