Jenny Saville

Slower start today, we managed to give Woody a walk up to woods before leaving for our timed entry into the Jenny Saville exhibition.  It’s a wonderful  show but there aren’t many paintings, I imagine because they are so huge you can only get 25 or so into the designated galleries.  I love her work, we saw the show in Edinburgh a few years ago and that seemed more varied, perhaps because so many have now gone into private ownership so negotiating them back out is tricky. I thought her ones of motherhood were so fresh and touching and this highly coloured faces in the final gallery make a huge impact.  Not many postcards, because she only licensed a few apparently. I suppose if you work at this scale seeing a postcard size version of your work must feel a bit…reductive. 

We then walked up to Soho House and had lunch and then I walked her through Soho showing her as much as I could before going into Liberty’s because she wanted to find a tuberose perfume.  We found many but she didn’t buy but the one she’ll go for is Eau Chic a delicious cologne from Astier de Villatte that frankly she’d be better off buying in Paris.  

We then whizzed up to Kings Cross which was packed to meet up with her agent for tea.  Impressive agent! I left them chatting at around 5.45 and caught the 6.30 home that was mercifully fast this evening.  

Having done nearly 40,000 steps in two days I was exhausted and ate a tomato and scrambled eggs before watching the end of series 1 of Severance and talked to HB about V’s allergy attack.  He is much better after a quiet day looking at carpets in Baku.