At 5 am on Monday I opened the curtains in the B&B I was staying in just outside Bedford to a big lemon setting moon and warm yellow stain of street lights. A cat came and sniffed my frosted car. With the energetic marks of a bamboo pen and black ink I ‘dug’ around the lit objects to excavate the darkness…I reckon Van Gogh would have drawn that ordinary yet extraordinary view outside his window.

Last night I travelled from Poole to West Bay to the lovely Sladers Yard gallery for an artist talk. The saturated blackness of Maiden Castle against the perfectly clear dusk sky was like velvet…it had something of dense fur about it.

This morning I take the dog for a run on Talbot Heath. I see a fold in the hillside shimmering with a deep darkness. The young green of new leaves poke out of the blackness to catch the early low sun.

I may want to take something of the quality of that darkness into my studio and explore its significance. Of course its intensity pulses only because of the surrounding light.