A month of making nothing: Shirley Jackson, Louise Bourgeois, and the dust I collected from vacuum cleaners because that is where the ideas arrive.

A photograph I dismissed for years, and the shadow across its corner that turned out to be me. On judgement arriving too early.

A shared bedroom, a border down the middle, and a mirror that opened into other rooms. On self-portraits, redacted faces, and what reflection refuses to explain.

An upstairs library, Mary Lennox, and a vacuum cleaner. On disappearing into books, and why the everyday turned out to be the place I was going.

I walk past my studio each morning already dressed for the office. On writing myself a job description, and the tea that gets me through the door.

A life drawing tutor's website vanished, taking my work with it. On kitchen tables, Virginia Woolf, and building a room that nobody else can switch off.

Two dogs, a bottle-green jersey, and a notebook I had forgotten writing in. On silence, collage, and the rituals that survive when everything else stops.

A graphite coat in a second-hand shop, a stack of hairstylist magazines, a face torn by accident. On finding what you didn't know you were looking for.

Three self-portraits, painted backwards onto Perspex. On de Beauvoir, Bachelard, and the home as a counter-universe.