
The best thing has been the climate, especially the seasons, although the summer was uncomfortably hot and seemed to go on for ever. I had the fan on round the clock.
Spring was joyful, it just blew my mind experiencing it after so long. I moved into my half of a studio space in an ASC building in Hawks Road, Kingston, in the middle of April. I was awed by the cherry trees in blossom in the suburban gardens on the 12-minute walk from Norbiton station. I tried to make some art about them. A few painted studies looked promising and then for some reason I embarked on a complicated screenprint with five colours. Because of very limited washout facilities at Hawks Road I used the drawing fluid method. The result was disappointing. I have my own screens and basic tools and had thought I could do a series in that way but abandoned it after the first one because of the practical problems.
I've been realizing that the work I do depends mainly on what I see. And having made this big move from tropical Trinidad to temperate London everything is different, all the ordinary sights and sounds and smells; the flowers, the birds, the weather, the trees, the people, the roads. Many things I recognize from forty years ago, with pleasure -- oak trees and acorns for instance, and the small white daisies that grow in grass. In fact, nearly everything, especially natural things because those were the things I was most keen on while growing up.
Most of the time it's either too cold or too hot to work outside so I take a lot of photos and I'm trying to develop a system for storing and retrieving them.