What kind of a year has 2014 been for you?
Very good, and very bad.
What has changed for the better and what, if anything, has changed for the worse?
For the better: I won the John Moores Painting Prize, which was wonderful; I never thought for a minute I would, or even that I would get in. And I had two museum shows: one by invitation to show in Tal R’s project space [Copenhagen], and the other in the Stadtische Galerie, Wolfsburg. And, as this coincided with my 80th birthday, I was given banquets, a cake decorated with a marzipan copy of one of my paintings, and Happy Birthday playing on the piano – all a huge surprise.
For the worse: my husband died.
What do you wish hadn’t happened this year?
I wish that my husband hadn’t died and that he was still around.
What do you wish had happened this year, but didn’t?
I would have liked to be in a marvellous German art collection. This got missed out by a chance stroke of timing and civic bad luck. And I didn’t get to the Malevich show.
What would you characterise as your major achievement this year and why?
Winning the John Moores Painting Prize because it has great meaning as the only big, prestigious British painting send in; and it includes with it a place in the John Moores collection, which is a sustained reflection of the history of painting in Britain. And as well as that, I’m expecting two very good studio visits and I have an inclusion in a touring Arts Council England exhibition curated by Jennifer Higgie, all very ace and exciting. I also have a museum show in The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin.
Is there anything you’d like to have done this year but haven’t?
I would have liked to get better at the computer.
What would make 2015 a better year than 2014?
If I could book a taxi and fix a train time without it being a bother, and that my studio visits work out OK.
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