I suppose I am influenced by this man. It began when I was at Exeter College of Art – A lecturer went to Giverny, Eure, in Upper Normandy, this famous ‘backyard’ was where Monet planted a large garden, a garden he painted for majority of his later life. This garden was then derelict, overgrown, rotted and totally destroyed, the photographs of the place were a total contrast to the manicured, arranged images Monet had painted and which now adorn the walls of the world’s major galleries. In reality Monet failed as a painter of nature – he was a painter of controlled nature, organised, no better than the studio painters of a few decades before, who were scorned by the Impressionists…same shit different label. Why is one of his paintings hung in the same gallery as a Pollock in Tate Britain? Are they the same? Am I guilty?

Answers here please.