Jo Wood stands to the left in a white top and green trousers, one hand on her hip. Steve Chapman sits to the right in a wide-brimmed black hat and a striped top under a waistcoat, a stuffed raven on his lap. Behind them, a row of my magnolia paintings on the wall at Burgh House.
If a certain famous picture of a certain couple with a certain white cat is now beginning to hover in your mind, that is not by accident.
Yes: David Hockney’s Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. I chose it partly because it is a portrait of a couple; partly because it is contre-jour, a piece of picture-making know-how that might otherwise not be obvious in my work; and mostly because I still love the attitude of the sitters in Hockney’s painting.
When I told Steve which picture I had in mind, he brought the toy raven to stand in for Percy.
Jo Wood and Steve Chapman are both artists. They have exhibited together before as the Art Babies. In fact, at the time of this sitting they had their own work up on show at The Barbican, so I was thrilled they made it to Burgh House at all.
A few weeks before, I had interviewed them together at Steve’s studio, to talk about the Barbican show – about their process, and what they hoped visitors might get from seeing the work.
I know Steve from impro training with Keith Johnstone, which is where much of what I do about presence and attention comes from. Steve is where I met the version of myself who is now writing this.
(Well, Jo too, if you think about it, but not till later.)
In one class, Keith sprang a two-hander on us. I played myself, as I was. Steve played a younger me – at sixteen, ish – sitting beside me on a bench, and asking questions about the life ahead.
Steve began, gently: “Would you mind telling me something? (Pause.) I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Will I make it? Will I ever write anything?”
I told him he would write for newspapers and magazines, that he would get amazing assignments, and that he would write books. Steve looked thrilled. “More than one book!” he said.
He asked whether I would meet someone. Whether I would marry. Whether I would have children. I told him yes to all of it – and that having a daughter, when it happened, would turn out to be extraordinary.
I remember, at around that point, feeling strangely dissociated. Also embarrassed. How self-indulgent, I thought. Who could possibly want to sit and hear this?
But when we walked off, I saw that a woman in the audience had tears in her eyes.
I hope I never stop taking seriously what impro can do.
***
Impro taught me, in a visceral way (in front of an audience! yikes!), to be OK with finding and showing other parts of myself. Steve has been a companion, and a co-conspirator, in that discovery ever since – one of the few people I know for whom playing another part of oneself – a younger self, or someone else altogether – is a working practice.
That readiness sits in the picture at the top of this page too – Steve arrived at the sitting with a raven, to stand in for Ossie Clark’s cat Percy.
***
Later, when Hockney died, Steve wrote to me on Instagram: “This post by you was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news. Loved being part of this.”
Jo replied: “Me too.”
I wrote back: “My work is done.”
This is one of the portraits in Contain Multitudes, my show at Burgh House, Hampstead, 18-23 August 2026.