PATRICIA CORNWELL'S WALTER SICKERT

reading 'Gormenghast' or listening to it on audiotape. also Patricia Cornwell's account of the Ripper (all the evidence she gathered came from the area I'm now living in. Walter Sickert's former studio is beside the leisure centre.) and I think her thesis is nonsense, but she has gathered a lot of invaluable information about the era and about Sickert too. It really brings this area alive for me, all its sinister or seemingly romantic darkness and sometimes an all too real darkness. and got into clay modelling which re-invigorated the painting. I'd lost all enthusiasm for painting and then the modelling brought it back for me. so Patricia Cornwell, this painting and whatever else, Gormenghast, The Turn of the Screw. Henry James was clever but not so clever that he could peer into the darkness that is around me now, if he had he'd be here now. I meet a young Austrian artist once a week for coffee nr Brick Lane, he wants me to write for the journal he edits. My feet are beginning to recover too (a big dose of psoriasis on my feet, incredible pain and itchiness - I'm falling apart.) I feel for you, I know the position of being a snail, living with my home on my back. Who would want it?