As the bus was between Gledenning Ave and Buccleugh St on North Rd this morning I turned to see Sacred Heart Church and, in the morning light, it looked as if Robin White had painted it, the hills and bush behind it, the hedge to its side. A man, troubled, got on at the next stop and, with his eyebrows and lined face, seemed as if he were a figure in a Jeffrey Harris painting. A glimpse through a window on the early part of the walk up North Rd showed a scene, ‘imagined in the context of a room’, as if framed by Joanna Margaret Paul.

If the poets teach the free man how to praise then the painters teach us how to see. It’s been a day when the gift of all of that seeing has been clearer than usual, and I’m grateful to them all.