I Look At This Painting Everyday
For a few years now, I’ve had a postcard of this painting tacked to my study wall. It’s called Pennsylvania coal... View Article
Categories for Point of View
What is a Museum?
Cultural encyclopedia or appropriated plunder? I recently took a trip to Athens in Greece. Whilst I was there I visited... View Article
Why I Write In Pen & Paper
Writing by hand helps me to express exactly what I want to express.
Can Art Clean Up Dirty Money?
In the Guggenheim, New York, people are throwing down a confetti of paper flyers from the famous curved balconies of... View Article
Why Learning a Musical Instrument Will Make You Happier
Learning to play is a most reliable source of pleasure. A few year ago I went to a party, a... View Article
How To Design Better Online Reading Environments
Online and offline reading experiences compared. Whenever I attempt to read anything online that is more than a few hundred... View Article
How Digital Changes the Nature of Original Art
The strange relationship between museum objects and the digital copies we make of them Today, it is possible to walk... View Article
Why Go To The Beach?
My past week has been spent stretched out on a beach, or otherwise walking up and down its supple sands,... View Article
Patience is the Unsung Hero of Creativity
It is tempting to think of creativity as an explosive act, picturing Jackson Pollock prowling around his canvas, dripping paint... View Article
The Pleasure of Cities
The first cities I truly visited were those I was set free in. When I was eighteen years old, unharnessed... View Article
Why Such Odd Names? Kobo, Kindle, Nook
eReaders and their names: a short survey One of my favorite phrases is “Books do furnish a room”. Whenever I... View Article
Social Media and The Gaze
The act of gazing brings people into new relationships. The angles and meeting points of looking and seeing imply distinctions... View Article
Zen in the Art of Archery
Eugen Herrigel’s beautiful insight into Zen is also problematic. Does it still have the power to teach?
Why happiness can’t be strategised
One of the most profound books I read as a younger person was Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. The... View Article
Turn 40 and don’t fade away
I’ve just turned 40 years old. It’s not an enormous number, not an elephantine age. But it’s a number that... View Article
Unreliable Trivia – The Value of the Mistaken Fact
It’s a bad habit, but when I’m in public I often listen in on other people’s conversations. Just recently I... View Article
Coventry Railway Station: A Murky Masterpiece
I’ve never been sure about Coventry railway station. Bold perpendicular lines of grey concrete, shifting mezzanine levels, fierce observance to... View Article
Digital Muzak: How they sell us our iPhones
The life force of a digital device, a mobile phone or a handheld tablet, can give the impression of something... View Article
Embarrassed yet? Some naked truths about life drawing classes
For the last six weeks I’ve been going to life drawing classes at a local college. Just as you see... View Article
A Time of Gifts: Fermour and the memoir
As a form of literature, the memoir has often struck me as an odd. The author assembles a small museum... View Article