'Bedtime stories billow the drapes with landscapes, faces, shadows, music'

So many images intersect and collide in front of my eyes as I sit sketching the bed;

The forest where the wood came from - looking up at the green light of the canopy.

The brutal axe cutting down a tree.

The rough skin and strained hands of the man carving growth into the wood, then waxing and polishing.

Delicate red cloth being stretched taut across the curling wooden frame.

Men shunt - shuffling the bed into position in the Crimson Bedroom

Thick drapes being hung.

The bed being used - by who?

What do they look like? What is their story?

Waking and rising from the bed, going to bed, being in bed.

Stripping the bed. New sheets, fresh linen.

Holding audience.

Birth and death in bed.

Relief and jubilance.

Solemn grey faced family.

The bed's wooden arms branching above and across.

How can I draw these images? They seem to swoop and circle like billowing drapes.

I have started to try to capture the lines that I am seeing in my mind.

Within the lines I will show the stories - interlink them somehow; capture the collision of time.

Thinking, talking and doing

Deadlines are a messy business; hunt down your idea, wrestle its wriggling form onto paper, then clean all the blood and sweat from it for market.

Messy and noisy.

It is really rare for me to get the opportunity to develop my ideas and artwork quietly. 'Thinking' becomes a shameful word, like 'procrastinating' and 'stagnating'

antonym: 'working'.

Being at Temple Newsam is reminding me of the value that thinking has within my creative process. I think that I exchanged thinking for doing without realising what I was sacrificing.

Not only thinking; talking.

Exploring ideas through discussing, brainstorming, listening, and looking.

Talking 'round an idea, until a funny little tangent introduces itself.

I have been talking with Shelley about this a lot. We are collaborating on workshops for children and adults at TN at the moment. We talk about the work that we are doing. We both want to know everything about the other's work, so that we can find connections to link themes together. As we talk, you can see our ideas galloping around us, intertwining and looping together - the words curling and sparking into life.

When the conversation ends it feels like waking up, and I am scribbling notes to remember the dream.

What is it about beds...

...that captures my imagination so much?

I am drawn into the Hinton House Bed;

the thick cloth of the drapes surrounding me, barely lit by yellow candlelight, dense mattress below me, deep pillows plumping my cheeks.

Bedtime stories billow the drapes with landscapes, faces, shadows, music. I cannot be frightened because I am defended by the menacing headboard, its gnarled growling, its knotted limbs creaking awake. The bed is a platform, a theatre.