Years ago, I found the shirt she's wearing at a secondhand shop. I wore it for years, and then gave it to Camilla. She used it for an art project, in which we both embroidered what ever we wanted onto it. Both people and things adjust to the people who spend time with them. The two of us, a bit like that shirt, have spent time with each other and adjusted ourselves to each other. I painted the watercolor behind her (pinned to a slanty attic ceiling) with that in mind. In the center, my face points left and hers right but they share the space.

He had at least two. I find that hilarious. Plus, I don't know of any painting he did that had an armadillo in it.

I visited Rembrandt House in Amsterdam. It was a funky building, tall and narrow, crammed with tourists and the oddments of an eccentric but businesslike personality. His studio was lovely. It's a small room, a third the size of mine, with a display of powdered paints in one corner.

I found this display very inspiring. I've been thinking about the Dark Mountain project a lot recently; the idea that we need to rethink our metaphors about nature. It's not something to be conquered or to be worshipped from afar. We're it, and we're in it. There's a radical responsibility we have to nature, which is the same as the responsibility we have to ourselves. I'd like to express this in paint, somehow. Seeing Rembrandt's paints reminded me that there are clays and other non-ephemeral pigments within walking distance from me. Of course, mostly they're reddish and greyish, but still. After I flew home, I went to Daniel Smith and got some mineral powders in colors I don't have at home, and in the next few months will experiment with making oils and watercolors. Exactly the way Rembrandt did, oh yes.

I went to Edinburgh in March to enjoy the company of my daughter and her boyfriend. I didn't bring my oil paints, but watercolors are portable, and the paper is relatively inexpensive. For this painting, I asked the two of them to stand so I could trace their shadows onto the paper. I like the idea of the movements of the subject and the different light sources and my own unsteady hand distorting the images so that there is a remove from the "real" image. Instead, all the filters we put up are part of the art. And then, of course, there are the vivid colors and the sheer fun of blowing the puddles of paint around all over the paper and a little bit onto their floor.