Friday was cooler and I had a teaching session to do in the afternoon in Liverpool. In the morning I treated myself to the Tate Gallery exhibitions: Mondrian and his Studios and Nasreen Mohamedi, an Indian artist whose work was completely unknown to me. It is always interesting to see how an artist’s work develops, particularly if only one period is well known. The exhibition covered Mondrian’s work over the years and into the abstracts we are most familiar with. I always find artists’ studios fascinating. I remember visiting Georgia O’Keefe’s last year and feeling very at home with her collection of found objects from the natural world. My little collection is on my table in the my studio. Mondrian painted squares of colour on the white walls of his studio.

Nasreen Mohamedi also produced abstract works beginning with natural forms and moving onto very minimalist abstractions. She was also a photographer and I could appreciate her focus on cropping scenes to look at the edges and geometric forms.

My original plan had been to spend some time down at the waterfront taking photographs as the light was particularly good, the tide out and I could see some possible compositions. Unfortunately just as I left the gallery the heavens opened and it rained very heavily. The black cloud followed me all the way from the Pier Head to Toxteth and I arrived at the hospital dripping wet. On my return walk to Lime Street Station it had fortunately eased off somewhat.