The Secret

The Secret - detail, pen and ink

Here is a detail of a drawing for you to enjoy.

The art I that I really like is all about revealing secrets, opening drawers, peering inside wardrobes: art as psychological prying; the sick delight in going through another persons wallet, their purse, their diaries; touching things you know only they touch; not knowing if they will suspect that someone has read their letter or slipped their hand into their pocket.

Drawing is, for me, a way of accessing this condition of revelation. It's more intimate, closer than my painting which always has a faintly official feel about it- a public art form: robust, designed for places where respectability, a public face is of import.

Billy's Dinner

This is a story about Billy. It is all absolutely true.

I met him at the underground station in North London and went to his house for dinner. Then there were some conversations with his children whose behaviour, when not illegal was at least vile.The children were fifteen and seventeen. I hoped they wouldn't show, but they did. Both slouched manacingly in the kitchen while I ate, watching me. One of them had recently been prosecuted for sticking a knife into another boy on the Edgware Road. I wasn't sure which one it was: I didn't want to ask. perhaps it was the one leaning against the wall, scratching his groin. Or it might have been the one with the peirced nostril.

I began to feeel quite sick. Not sick in the normal way that you might resonably expect to feel after eating dinner at Billy`s. I mean really very sick indeed.

So they drove me to a hospital and was laid up there for a week, which were largely taken up with vomiting.

I left hospital quite angry about Billy`s cooking, even for a time wondering if he might have intended to poison me .

As soon as I was out on the street I called him.

"Billy you bastard."

"Sorry mate," replied Billy.

It wasn`t all bad news. there was a twenty pound not on the floor of the phone box and I went straight to a pub nearby and had a few.