Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A figurative artist who was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery, best known for her controversial sculpture of Oscar Wilde rising from his cof
On the island
Eight records
A little bit of conversation between Lady Bracknell and John Worthing from The Importance of Being Oscar.
It is George Singing. Yes it's a sweet song, especially written by John Chilton. For George and his girlfriend uh Squeaky...
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
So my mother was a great church person. She organized uh all the flower festivals and ran the Mothers' Union and that kind of thing. And so this is a bit for her and a bit for a very close friend of mine, who it always causes to cry.
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
I like the ladies best. So this is Dusty Springfield, and the memory. Of uh the Gateways Club and the King's Robe and a lot of hot, sweaty dancing.
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131Favourite
In the early seventies. I um was opened up by someone who became a muse and Encourage me to paint people.
Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)
Well, this glorious bit of Noel Card. Takes me back to. Henrietta in every way,'cause there are a great many possibilities of what to fall in love with in this record, and Henrietta, I think, had and did most of'em.
My friend Keith Milo played the War Requiem quite a lot in our flat in Greenwich in the sixties. And I shall never forget the sort of electricity that went through me the first time I heard his music.
My favourite film by A Million Miles is Sun Like it Hot. And I've chosen this record as I think it's for me it's one of Marilyn Munro's greatest manifestations...
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:04Do you have to paint people to whom you're whose personalities you're attracted to?
Well, I wouldn't take on a commission to paint someone with whom I felt no rapport. And certainly about Stephen Fry. I found the the the optimism, the wit in the right eye and uh the sense of tragedy and what can happen in life in the left eye...
Presenter asks
11:09Your father, you said, was a mysterious person throughout my childhood. What do you mean by mysterious?
But he was behind the Daily Telegraph a very gruff person and rather a stranger. out of the house a lot of the time and uh doing other things and uh... He had another life.
Presenter asks
11:46Did you ever talk to [your father] about [his other life] in later life?
In later life, yes. And what brought us together? was when he began to paint... He turned out to be a completely natural painter.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Just William
Richmal Crompton
I always identified with William, and when the deepest moments of uh Doom and gloom I can take out a just William Book and they still make me laugh and he somehow finds a way. Whatever is against him, William gets there in the end.
The luxury
the wine cellars of All Souls, Oxford
is the wine cellars of All Souls, Oxford, which are ... Some people don't know this, but in the wine cellars of also at Oxford, there's a long-legged blonde bunny girl serving the drinks. I wouldn't be quite on my own on a desert island.
How did your mother, Maggie, react to this change [your coming out as a lesbian]?
Ah, she was not not too pleased... what sorted her out was being such a church person she went away on a weekend retreat to a monastery somewhere and... said, I do hope you haven't ever held it against her Let us kneel down and pray that she meets uh people whom she will love, you know? And so that sorted her out.
Presenter asks
27:08What is it you're after in those moments [when drawing your father as he was dying]?
But you don't want to leave someone, do you? I mean, if they're they are if you can clearly see that they're in the process, if you like, of leaving you... you in a great work of art I think you know what it is to be alive and you also get a bit of sense of what it is to die.
Presenter asks
30:57Do you feel that cavalier about your own death?
Not at all... No no, I mean, not yet, not yet... I'm not, sir. philosophical about it. I I I'm afraid of it. We don't know where we're going, do we?
“unless the work is one's best friend, I think uh one might as well not do it. It has to be the absolute priority of life.”
“Whether you're miserable, whether you're bored, whether you're tired, whether you're randy, whatever you're feeling, you can go to your work.”
“I try to empty myself, become a channel for the truth of the person in front of me to come through me onto the canvas”
“when I drew my mother in her coffin, I did sort of say to myself, Gotcha now, mother, not going anywhere now What can you capture i in death that you possibly can?”
“I think it's really good Mexico, you know, sort of death as a friend and just the other half of life, the other side of the coin.”