Last Wednesday saw me in Oxford to pick up a frame for a painting. After our last visit to the Ashmolean and with my new determination to do more observational sketching, I decided to spend a few hours pottering there. I always like to begin with this staircase, as it takes me back to my art student days and the first time I breathlessly and reverently climbed them to visit the Renaissance rooms. I can still remember the emotional choke in my throat (dramatic child that I was) as I paid my respects to the Masters and began my own long artistic journey.
I like the continuity of returning with another sketchbook, over twenty years on, still tramping that same road, which has twisted in ways I could not have dreamt of then. And now I find the new extension has caught my heart too. It also leaves me breathless, though for a different reason. 
I actually feel a little sick if I get too near the glass partitions and look down - or up. But I love the way you can watch the other galleries and their occupants on all levels, like a giant cultural ant's nest coiling round the central space which seems to me like an invisible pillar rising through the centre of the museum.
Needless to say, I took many photos of this and that, flashless photography (for personal use) being allowed. Just look at this little collection of lovelies - three needlework 'favours' or love tokens from the 1600s, each just few inches tall - 
- and a sweet gold wirework frog purse from the same era, used for carrying herbs or perfumed sachets. I wonder if I could reconstruct a similar design?
But with all this visual wealth around me, I had to narrow my choice of subject down if I were not to become overwhelmed. So I naturally picked animals. Like this adorable little hare tureen, which could sit in one's hand.
And this exquisite porcelain cat, which I think is some kind of pill box -
- scaring the nearby tapestry parrot.
I found myself more drawn to the Oriental galleries, perhaps because my own style is similarly curvaceous.
A wonderful piece of Satsuma ware, a mouse sitting on a turnip. Size is roughly that of large cooking apple.
Ivory monkey with dragonfly, just a few inches long. The tiny dragonfly is about the size of my little fingernail.
I fell in love with this deceptively simple hare-shaped lacquered incense box the last time we were here. It measures about two and a half inches across and to me is absolute design perfection. I think if I could have just one thing from the thousands of things in the Ashmolean, it would be this.
As with the landscape notes I made last weekend, the object of my sketching was not to produce a page of pretties nor even to make notes for future work. Neither was the challenge to exactly copy the object itself.
What I wanted to do was explore the design style of each piece and the way each individual artist had interpreted and tweaked the animal form, especially if it was also a functional item. Trying to get inside their creative minds as I worked; and at the end of the exercise, the final scribbles were really just a crude record. The real result was what had been imprinted in my visual memory and loosening up my hand skills. I'm already looking forward to my next visit.
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Suffering from what I now know was deep depression, the result of a chaotic childhood, traumatised by losing one parent after another, I was in a downward spiral, common to youngsters who are dumped by the care system and left to sink or swim. It was a hopeless situation, but at least I finally had the wit to realise that. So I was heading to Oxford for an interview to get onto an A level art course, at the more humble College of Further Education.
We were dropped off at the Abingdon Road roundabout and immediately a summer shower drenched us. We walked up to St Aldates. The sun came out. It was my first glimpse of Cotswold stone, and the wet buildings glowed golden yellow. Almost on cue, the bells of Oxford began to peal, as if welcoming me - it was a million miles away from the damp, slummy bedsit we had left behind us and I could actually sense the course of my life changing. I fell irretrievably in love with this ancient, beautiful city and it, in turn, civilised me.
I got my cherished place at the college and began the long, slow process of repairing my fractured life. I also began studying art history, and after so many years of neglect, my starved soul guzzled up knowledge and culture. I discovered the Ashmolean - like so many of our museums, it was and is, still free admittance to everyone. I nourished myself on paintings, largely ignoring the artifacts sections, which interest me now. With my battered Penguin copy of Vasari's Lives of the Artists in my pocket, I drew bronzes and copied artworks to my heart's content. I haunted the Renaissance room, which looks almost the same today as it did then.
I haven't been there for years - it is a fair trek to town if you do not own a car, so outings are rare. But this week we made the effort, to see the new gallery extension, opened last November. I was a little fearful of how they had treated the old girl, and raced up to the Renaissance room to say hello to my old friends.
After this comfort trip, we found our way almost by accident, to the new development, which cost £61 million...and worth every penny. It is stunning - it actually brought tears to my eyes. We wandered about gawping at the luxurious and clever use of space - a cross between a glass ants nest and the drawing 'Relativity' by Escher. The place was buzzing - a strange change from the previous fusty atmosphere, but a welcome one; it really felt like a 'people's museum'. 
I fell in love all over again, and realised how much I had missed actually seeing real artworks of quality. There were dozens of enthusiastic, helpful staff buzzing about (a radical change from the grumpy jobsworths who used to sit foursquare in a corner, dozing off) and I enthused to one young lady about the new extension, explaining how I used to come and draw here, thinking I would be the next Michelangelo. She asked me if I did go on to become an artist, and I said yes, I'm a children's illustrator; not exactly what I had in mind then, but I did achieve some of my dreams.
We are off on a big expedition to Oxford this week; we haven't had a day in town for years. It's a bit of a palaver, with our limited rural bus service (which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Stagecoach advert we saw on TV last week). Although thank God we have one at all (she said, hastily crossing fingers). Like Cindrella - but without the frock - one has to return at a certain time before the Sun goes down, (eg when the last join-up 6 o'clock bus leaves) or fork out for an expensive taxi home. However it can't be avoided: I have frames/mounts to pick up. One has been custom made for Party Food -
- which will be hung (appropriately) in the client's dining room - and smaller ones for forthcoming paintings I have been itching to do. So I'm doing a lot of Moleskine scribbling, as until I actually have the frames and mounts in front of me I can't start planning what size the artworks will be. And I have a 'bread and butter ' job to continue, which I must knuckle down to. Not as much fun as this chap -
Frankly the idea of a day in town scares the bejabers out of me, I might just go and hide in the Ashmolean.
