'I only did Victoria's Secret so I could fuck a supermodel, and I did.'

So announced Rie Rasmussen after her walk down this particular runway in 2001. An unapologetically loud voice during the two years she spent in fashion, she seems just as difficult to bypass as an artist, film maker and actress. Indeed, her work speaks for itself. Her powerful and widely acclaimed work in film - (her debut Thinning the Herd, a thriller short, was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2004, and her first feature length film, Human Zoo, premiered at the Berlinale film festival last year to favourable reviews) - is inspiring enough, but it is her paintings that pull me in.




I admire this work. It manages to convey the depth of the raw emotion involved in sex between men and women without a romantic overtone; there is tenderness, for me, illustrated in the softness of the markmaking, but it is interspersed with a drama that sometimes verges on aggression. They are very primal stories, and, I think, all the more stunning and beautiful for that.

MANIAMANIA mania

Jewellery is my thing. It is my great love. I wear it all the time, and my preference is usually big and clunky and OTT. Too much is just enough, in other words. The other day it struck me to count the necklaces I was wearing after I took my earphones out, thinking they were broken, and realised the curious sound I could hear over Joanna Newsom was me, jangling -I had on five, and they were not small. Now, this is a personal best of course, but my point is this: I overload on my treasures because I love them; they have become great friends in many cases, mostly because they have often come from great friends.

Naturally, I have a little wish list of bits and pieces to add to my collection, but officially topping it, as of today, is the Immortals ring from the 2010 collection entitled 'Real Life Awaits Us' by ManiaMania.

Just gorgeous, and a little rough around the edges, which, come to think of it, is my preference regarding most things in life.

I also have a major girl crush on the designer of this beauty Tamila Purvis, who, if not rough around the edges, is definitely gorgeous, and definitely amazingly talented. Photographed wearing her designs here by Garance Dore (another source of abiding admiration) she looks exactly how I want to look when I pile on my jewels of a morning: Chic, and then some.

"...the bright day is done,
And we are for the dark."

William Shakespeare

It's getting dark, Darling. Some people don't know the gift they have.

My heart,
Its nearly your time of year...just a few days to go. I think of you often, even though its been such a long time now, since we walked in the same places. So long that I'm afraid I won't see your face clearly again. I've forgotten you see. I see you now, immobile, as if always, always in our pictures. I'm ashamed that I can't remember how you looked when you spoke.
I remember little things, that over time have become big. They have to take up a lot more room now that there are more years to fill. That's life I suppose, although I wish you were still here so I could get to know you better, and you could get to know me better. I do know you loved me though, I felt it. And I love you. And I miss you.

I'll see you one day xxx

Francesca Woodman, Forget Me Not's.

Francesca Woodman's work has been an inspiration to me for a long time. After quite a sustained period of - (I don't know what the correct term is) - 'block' in my own creative thinking, I found myself revisiting the work of my favourite artists, going through ancient sketchbooks, and so on; retracing my steps to find another beginning. The feeling was akin to swirling myself into a childhood comfort blanket. At once familiar, and slightly panicking in the sense that I knew things must be bad if I was back here.

Each time I look at these photographs though, I am newly in awe at their uniqueness and communicative power. Art critic Kathryn Hixon said of them: "Woodman's pictures are not de-constructive but constructive. She added layers of reflection and mimicry within the photograph to confound the transparent recording of the real. The images become psychological portraits of the identity of the body rather than identifying physical portraits that reveal the psyche." For me, they are a symbolic representation of the famale body and our relationship with it as individuals, when so often images seem concerned with its relationship with other people; as such these images are far removed from voyeurism, but are simultaneously intensely personal reflections and an ongoing series of new encounters of the self.

I'm grateful I'm having some problems, its meant I have this work flitting around in my mind. No bad thing.

The forget me nots are in bloom in the garden too. I've decided to consider the whole day a sign that this is the right way to get moving.

One Minute Blog

"Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin