Clare Gaylard Glass 

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My Birthday, amongst other things a visit to the Grace Kelly exhibition at the V&A and a real carpet bag that is more Mary Poppins. The carpet bag is a labour of love from the owner of 'Campaign' a treasure-chest of a place in Peasenhall. The carpet is Axeminster and the design was brought back from the Crusades The metal frame was made on a Victorian press and I like the jewel like colours and the craftsmanship.

All dead but still full of colour and movement. The duck-egg cornucopia evolved from the most practical way to carry these a few miles of walk without reducing them to powder. The girls can't decide if it is more beautiful or sinister. I put them together and confirm to myself they are certainly both. I remember somebody saying: 'Nothing is lost from the book of the soul' and this is definately a recording of lost things. Another friend says it makes her think of a good seafood lunch and I make the mental leap and say the slice of lemon would be missing. Viva le difference.

Sir Orfeo Illustrated by the wonderful Errol Le Cain

My studio is almost ready but there is the small matter of a very old and valuable sash window that has been painted shut for thirty years or so. Effective ventillation is an essential part of working with glass so while that is being worked out I draw, paint, cook and we make birthday cakes with increasingly elaborate fondant icing details. The children benefit but I'm ready to set up outside with a Hothead torch as soon as the weather permits.

My years in Thailand were characterised by bringing up three small children and doing work for non-profit orgs. Also by the deep beauty around us inspiring and informing my art. Our old home and neighbourhood was a block away from Lumpini Park and has been pretty much at the centre of the current troubles. It is shocking to see our old streets, friends and neighbours caught up in so much violence and they are very much in our thoughts.

We took a boat to Greenwhich, home of the obeservatory and of Greenwich Mean Time and this vision obscured the symmetry and naval glory. He is a Cockney phenomena, a Pearly King who can just be seen ducking into his magnificent cab. I never have the face to photograph people full-on but the cab is something else. This gentleman drives around London collecting for charity and his taxi is a thing of beauty.

We went hunting for Wingfield Castle, the inspiration for Dodie Smith's novel 'I Capture the Castle' there are no directions to be found online and we didn't have a map so it was exciting to find it for ourselves. A grey, mean day but a lovely find.

Finding winged inspiration on a perfect, sharp, clear Easter Monday in Central London.

My first spring in ten years! After a decade in Asia I am enjoying every moment and constantly awed by the obvious and the familiar. This was yesterday when a boy and a dog needed walking, we took a detour to Felixstowe and had a long walk by the sea. Just as the photos of Asia never show the intensity of the heat, these can't convey the biting cold of the seaside air. Most of the beach huts are off the sea front at the moment and the winter winds have swept large banks of sand off the beach, its pretty austere and minimal.

Suffolk is old home ground for us but Africa and Asia are where our children have grown up. Did I say they have never seen snow before now? I now do a series of school runs through narrow country lanes. I slow down for horses, enormous tractors, a pack of sixty-plus, free-ranging beagles from a local kennels. I slow down for ice, or I nearly spin off the road (a couple of times). When there is nobody behind me I slow down to look at scarecrows, fields, trees and endless sky and as here, old farm machinery that looks like abstract sculpture.

My grandfather was fascinated by Egyptian antiquities and made this tribute in his spare time. The chesspieces tuck away into secret drawers which I have pulled slightly open for this dodgy photo. Each piece is elaborately painted with a level of detail not picked up here. In a family of seven children the treasures get rationed out and I somewhat reluctantly delivered this to one of my brothers at New Year.

We are moving on from Singapore after only two years here, barely time to skim the surface. I'm thinking of all the places I haven't been to yet, the photos I was always going to go back for and the amazing 'things' such as food or art objects that are going to be hard to source or madly priced in the UK. Ten years in Asia is plenty of time to lose a bit of your heart and it has been the home our children mostly grew up in. So 'going home' is an odd concept for them.

I don't have a medley of images for Singapore but this zodiac ball expresses a lot..... My Singapore is a sometimes overwhelmingly, densely populated place with great deal of variety, strangeness and beauty under its 'World City' gloss. 

I'd say that the hawker centres are one of my favourite places, the huge open canteens of trestle tables and plastic chairs where you can people watch and help yourself to any Asian food choice you can imagine for under five bucks..

Having fed the body, for the soul: the crumbling but sturdy 'rennovation in progress' Cathederal of The Good Shepherd,  where the choir raise the roof and almost blow the speakers with magnificent choral music from all ages, languages and places, and the we, the public get to join in. Deo Gracias.

Family Day at the torch, hotter than it looks.

The aural and visual counterpoint to our tranquill gallery interior has been the dense, relentless, pile-driving and the astonishing pit of labour/cross section of a building site directly outside.

A calavera I like:

 “The English man is a skeleton

 so is the Italian

 and Maximilian;

 the Roman Pontiff,

 all cardinals

 kings, dukes and councilmen

 and the Head of State

 in the grave are all the same:

 only a pile of skeletons.”

I finally decided on 'Multiplicity' as a title and this is 'Framing Angie's' unique frame. A combination of spontaneous pleasure & hours of labour and applied skill.  A good metaphor for the benefits of art-enrichment. I forgot to measure it before framing so it will probably go down in the catalogue as 'Very Long'.

The air-con men have just kicked me out of my studio with a salutory 'Can we do the air-con in your junk room now?'.

Well at least the air-con should be fine as I never use it, I have fans for exhaust and air-flow but I work in the tropics, with a 1000 degree flame, next to a large kiln firing at 960 degrees and get so absorbed I don't notice the heat.

This is a large painting halfway through its creative process. We have two pieces of combined work going into our auction and this is one. All four artists take a turn and we live with the results. It is quite intimidating, making marks on a canvas already worked into by one or two other artists, but there is also a sense of being liberated from responsibility and choices. This canvas still has one artist to go.....that is me.

 Birthday chocolates from Laurent Bernard, they taste as fine as they look. My daughter's, not mine, I would have eaten them first, she wants a photo of them first, so our tastes do meet but somewhere in the middle.