I’ve never been a fan of the Turner Prize selection – especially the so-called ‘Installation’ entrants and can’t believe that the majority will pass the test of time as pieces of art. I’m sure most of them are slowly rotting away in the bowels of Tate Britain. However, Mark Wallinger, the artist who produced one of the more artistic pieces for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – Ecce Homo, a figure of Christ crowned with barbed wire – has won the competition to create a landmark monument for the South of England. His giant white horse will dominate the landscape in Kent, and I for one will look forward very much to seeing it in a couple of years time when it's completed. I remember being impressed with Anthony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’ a couple of years ago when my train passed close by it as I returned from the Edinburgh Festival. We have horses carved out of the chalk landscape, which are part of our heritage – The White Horse of Uffingham and Cerne Abbas being impressive examples – but just imagine the size of Mark Wallinger’s horse. One hundred and sixty feet high (I still think in yards, feet and inches) the horse will be 33 times life- size - about as high as the Statue of Liberty in New York – you and I will become Lilliputians with our heads no higher than the horse’s hooves. What a sight it will be!
My week has been one long session of work. Nine hours a day, every day. I’m working on a large painting of our Olympic Oarsmen setting out on a misty day last summer on the river at Henley. About 26 inches wide it’ll probably take me about 300 hours to complete. This is my progress so far – and that’s nearly 60 hours work. There are 42 people in the painting.
My favourite story of the week concerns the Irish Police. Apparently in a six-month period, a Polish driver had clocked up over fifty traffic offences on Ireland’s roads. In vain the police tried to catch up with Prawo Jazdy, but never succeeded. Each time the driver gave a different home address. It wasn’t until an internal Police memo revealed that Prawo Jazdy - the name printed in the top right hand corner of the Polish driving license – was the Polish for ‘Driving License’!