Old Father Time

Throughout my childhood our dad kept racing pigeons in a manky loft in the garden, training them sporadically for what he saw as the holy grail: the timed race back from France. Some of this training, for reasons known only to him, began in our school playground, about forty minutes’ drive from our house. At least once a week he would pull up at the gates in his battered Volvo with opera blaring, climb out in his work suit lightly upholstered with straw, and release the pigeons from the boot while other parents dropped off their children in a more standard fashion.

As the pigeons flapped wildly into the air, he would add insult to injury by shouting “Cooey, cooey, cooey” after them, some sort of motivational chant to send them on their way. I never knew whether to skulk in the car until the furore had passed or make a mad dash for the school building before anyone realised I was connected to this solicitor–bird man hybrid. Mostly I just wanted to fly up and away with the flock, it was excruciating - like Wurzel Gummidge meets The Birds.

Up, up and away with the flock was the dream

When I conjure up memories from long ago, I tend to have the most clarity on the chillingly terrifying, horribly painful, insanely embarrassing, or devastatingly lonely moments - extreme experiences at the negative end of the spectrum. At first I thought this confirmed my idea of myself as a moany, neggy middle-aged woman, but after talking to a few others, I’ve realised it’s actually quite normal.

In my twenties and thirties I was often on the move. As a self-employed artist with a thirst for adventure, I spent a year or so in Sydney, a couple of years in Spain, then Berlin, then NYC, wherever the wind took me. The experiences were rich but often disorienting: lonely stretches, a sense of being untethered. Time felt accelerated and fragmented, and some moments remain painfully vivid, magnified by the discomfort of being elsewhere.

But those years left clear markers, etched into memory because they were uneasy, demanding, and consequently unforgettable. They give me chapters when I look back, and I’m grateful because it feels like a life made up of different parts; as if a life with more parts is more worthwhile which is nonsense but comforting all the same.

By contrast, the thirteen years I’ve spent in Brighton have flattened into one long stretch. As someone who was previously always on the move, I find this terrifying in itself. Life and work settled into a rhythm: productive, but often unremarkable. It’s been much comfier: I’ve bought property, got married, have dear friends, hobbies, and community. I feel the same about my artistic output of the two decades I spent working as a realist artist: technically fluent, steady production, variations on a theme. Yet looking back, the work I made during those years blurs as though stability smooths time out.

Yet this last year has been different. 2025 felt like a charged, vivid moment stretched across twelve months: intense, uncomfortable, unstable, and for those reasons, one I’ll probably always remember. Changing my practice fundamentally last year brought a pressure to explore, experiment and figure it out all at once. There has been an almost manic urgency to make up for the “lost time” of my practice before the change, which rationally shouldn’t be something to be cancelled out; it was its own thing in its own time.

It’s a strange paradox: I feel as though I’m starting from scratch, yet simultaneously, I can sense the leaps I’ve made in my artistic evolution in a single year. I’ve felt time sharpen again, not by displacement, but by new challenge, risk, focus, and the creative process

Since we moved in five years ago, I’ve been meaning to buy a comfy chair for the window to sit and stare at our glorious sea view here in Brighton which I’m ashamed to say I’ve somehow stopped really noticing. Before anything else happens in 2026, that chair is incoming. I’ve a strong hunch that if anything’s going to add depth to my sense of time it’s going to be getting lost in The Great Beyond while sitting on my arse on the regular.

Wishing you all deep time and lots of noticing in the year ahead.

Patsy XO

Sit on your arse, love and notice the view…