Come September there were three choices open to me. My painter friend had the offer of a house in Tangier, or I could just stay home and paint without tuition, or I could study with the French painter Amédée Ozenfant, who was coming from Paris to open a school in London. Of course I had not heard of him, but the idea of one teacher and a small number of students appealed to me far more than one of the big schools, so I chose this, rather tentatively, for one semester. I now heard that Ozenfant was a friend and colleague of Léger and that they had taught at the Académie Moderne in Paris, that Le Corbusier had built Ozenfant a house, and that together they had started the Purist Movement. The Ozenfant Academy of Fine Art opened in London in mid-September ’36.

By then, I had done six small flower paintings. I took them along and said nothing. This apparently was the right thing to have done; teachers like beginners. There was one other student in the nicely spacious studio: she was Leonora Carrington at nineteen, beautiful, her eyes intense and mischievous. What people! I had never met anyone remotely like them. Other students soon joined us. Against the back wall was an immense mural-sized painting on which Ozenfant was still working; I was doubtful if I liked it. The main thing was that I was enthralled by meeting so many people in the arts and to have found for myself a passion at last.

And it was such an absorbing passion; although I was to have depressions for many years to come, I don’t think I was ever bored again. Leonora stayed two or three months, met Max Ernst, went to live with him in France. I went on to study with Ozenfant for three years in London, then for two more years in New York.

We students often spent Saturdays in the museums, for me one continual revelation. At first I was most attracted to Gauguin and to Le Douanier Rousseau. Around this time, I decided to do a painting at home, as I was in no way confident enough to do it with others looking on. It was of a woman, naked, sitting cross-legged on the ground; on either side of her a short distance away sat a cat; stretched across the foreground was a snake; in the background, Rousseau took over: it was all fat, highly-indented leaves. When I brought it to the studio there was a hush at first and then Ozenfant kissed me.

For some time now, I had wanted to get to America. I really wanted to emigrate, as I had the over-exaggerated notion that if the Nazis should win the coming war it would be the end of civilization in Europe. I believed all those in the fields of culture, that is, all kinds of artists, teachers, philosophers, writers, poets, musicians, and scientists, should make for the New World. I talked to the other students, wanted to tell Ozenfant; but who was I to tell him what to do?

This part of the country was so recently occupied by outsiders; Arizona only became part of the United States in 1912 – two years after I was born. Many of the people I was meeting then were the first of their kind in the West. For instance, John Weatherall was the first white man to find the Rainbow Bridge, the largest natural arch in the world. I stayed with him and his wife at Kayenta, just to the south of the now famous Monument Valley where Goulding was its first trader. Lorenzo Hubble, one of the most legendary of them all, had only just died; in fact, the woman in the Holbrook hotel had been his nurse, and I will always be grateful to her, for she guided me to one of the greatest trading posts ever.

Finally, I got back on a Greyhound bus and continued the rest of the journey to Hollywood, and settled down to painting. I was finding my own style; I had a new lover and was full of ideas. Many of the paintings I saw whole just there in front of me. I ignored Hollywood, but I had a Victory garden which I walked to – I didn’t have a car. I grew melons, peppers, eggplant and the best green beans I’ve ever eaten. I took a first aid course and thought often of England, even of going back. My mother was more or less safe in a remote vegetarian guest house and did not want me to face the high seas and the U-boats. We wrote to each other every week.

For some time the British Isles had been filling with American troops and the equipment of war, for the invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe. In far-away California we knew little, as plans were secret until it happened, and that was in June 1944. The end of the war was now predictable, but no one knew when. I returned to New York with many paintings, as the first step towards London, where I would go to see my mother. Although I had been away from New York and other painters for most of two years, my work since 1943 had taken a jump towards fantasy. Animals were represented rather more often than people, e.g. “The Sulky Lion”: hardly more than two-dimensional, the buildings small and quite out of scale. “Tiger in the Sky”: similar, but more three-dimensional; and from then on, distances increased, by ’43 giving the sense of a place where you and the viewer might be. This is one of the characteristics I like about Surrealism. It was also in the early ’40s that certain American Abstract painters were gathering in New York. William Baziotes was the only one whose early work really pleased me, but small suggestions of abstraction mixed with fantasy did creep into my work, especially in some line drawings: “Herb People” & “Drug People” and others (almost doodles, perhaps).

These months soon after the war were often dreary; grey weather, time-consuming queues to buy the most meagre rations almost prevented painting (solved by paying cleaning lady to stand in line and shop). The one painting I know I did at this time was “Advancing Monuments”; it was something of a breakthrough – the figures were two-dimensional shapes, but placed in the spaciousness of distance: a way of working which continued through the rest of the ’40s, with, sometimes, the figures becoming three-dimensional, also. That unexpected gift of seeing the paintings whole had more or less ceased, but ideas were still flowing from other angles and interests: for instance, physical exploration of the planet. In those days I often heard myself saying, “If I weren’t a painter I’d like to go on an expedition.” I was fascinated by the earth’s phenomena, the more spectacular the better – volcanoes, lava lakes, mudpots, geysers, waterspouts, tornadoes, twisters. A painting called “Tornado” done at this time has a determined-looking twister at its center as well as some quite abstract shapes, one of which is reminiscent of pre-Colombian Mexico.

There was another painting, small, almost square, “The Green Witch.” I know when I sold it (late ’40s, Taos), but not when I did it. It had an arresting shape in the sky, and below this so-called witch are buildings as if made of adobe, some with animal heads. This I might claim as a prophetic touch, as I had no thought of going anywhere other than New York or California when I would finally get back to the States. But shortly before I left London, in late summer, Taos, New Mexico, was to be my destination. In this area of northern New Mexico, adobe has been the usual building material since the Pueblo Indians started their village settlements here, long before the coming of the Spanish Conquistadores, who in turn built their Mission churches of the same mixture of mud and straw. In both Taos and Santa Fe today, there are many splendid houses, even hotels, in the same building-style, though it is often reinforced by more easily maintained materials.

Paul Wengraf had offered me a second show in September ’46, but I did not stay to see it. It was mainly of the large charcoal-pencil drawings I had done as a student of Ozenfant. So Taos was where I found myself in the Fall of ’46, in superb weather and amid the most magnificent scenery up the Rio Grande gorge, some 80 miles north of Santa Fe. The road, the only paved one in those days, brings you to what is surprisingly known as Taos Valley, an extensive plain open to the west but contained on its other three sides by higher mountains going up to 13,000 ft. Both Santa Fe and Taos are around 7,000 ft., on this tail of the Rockies which dwindles to semi-desert flatness soon after Albuquerque, to the south. I was enchanted, and particularly, by the arrangement of the land in the Taos area; it was quite simply so satisfyingly right, it brought both serenity and excitement. Furthermore, it was the first small, dominated-by-its-scenery place I had ever lived. My house had just two adobe rooms, one with a corner fireplace made by an Indian woman; not only was it good-looking, with its built-in adobe seat to one side, but it was of the kind that never smoked. The wood we burned was piñon or cedar, and there was room for it to be stored in my outhouse, assuring it of being continually sweet-smelling. For water there was a tap in the yard (baths were taken when invited for dinner with friends). I loved it all – that is, except for the gossip, everyone liking to know what everyone else was doing.

I soon started doing some work and, during these nearly four years, did many of my better paintings. Christmas, my first in Taos, was like no other, as our celebrations included gong out to Taos Pueblo on Xmas Eve, where the two processions, one Indian, one Christian, would meet and follow one another, bonfires blazing all around. The next day, in snow or sun, the Indians would perform one of their mass dances in the wide space opposite their five-storey village.

For the present, in this Spring of ’47 I was most content to be stationary in this tiny town, feeling little or no nostalgia for the big cities. Except for those moments of doubt and hesitation, painting was an absorbing and satisfying occupation. I thrived on it, was never bored. And there was variety here – the weather; new phenomena, such as complete double rainbows; clouds imitating the flat-topped mesas; shooting stars, sometimes showers of them; a moonbow; black skies heralding storms; but more sun than anywhere else I had lived, together with refreshingly cool mornings and evenings, due to the altitude. And new people: our population of 2,000 rose in summer to 3,000. There was a small upheaval ahead of me, as I had promised my mother I would return to London for a couple of months in the summer. I streaked cheerfully through New York, languished a little in London, was soon back to the sun and sagebrush. Exhibits were getting set up; I believe I did most of them myself but cannot clearly remember how or when. Of course, showing in Taos or Santa Fe was easy; Taos had almost as many galleries as there were artists.

The summer slowly and gracefully enveloped us; and this year, I stayed in Taos. On the edge of town there was a swimming pool with no facilities, except that it was warmed by a hot spring; we could swim by night (as well as by day) lit by the headlights of a car or the moon. In the town there were several places to dance; in those days, we still danced with partners. One dance was the vasaviana, left behind by the Spanish – a rose in the teeth, why not?

I don’t think the other resident artists were much interested in my painting; most were moving headlong into abstraction, so, again, I was not part of a group. This seemed to be a repeating pattern for me; I wondered, was it good or bad? Perhaps I had more talent for remaining an outsider than for anything else. Should I worry? I hardly could, with the urge to go my own way pushing so firmly and spontaneously; but I noticed that I made a few sales, and also, that peoples’ comments on my work, mainly from visitors or strangers, were often wildly contradictory, ranging from “highly spiritual” to “brazenly pagan”: a little disconcerting and puzzling, as I was not inclined to interpret my paintings in either of these ways, thinking of myself as very much a visual person. I was and am still enormously pleased and stimulated, or repelled, by the look of things, be they real and tangible, in the outside world, or arrangements of form and color. My paintings are not telling a story, nor are they making a statement; yet, they are not truly abstract. They are showing a place, nearly always three-dimensionally real, yet a fantasy.

One of the Taos galleries, run by a woman and friend of mine, had arranged to take a large group of Taos artists to Palm Springs, a well-known resort and a center for earthquakes. I and several of my pictures were greeted by just that: an earthquake, a smallish one but with repeated after-shocks. We were invited for cocktails by an elderly British expatriate couple, the kind who would know how to behave in whatever circumstance. The whole house shook. The wife, glancing at the ceiling, remarked to the husband, “I think that’s a new crack dear, don’t you?” All we did was sip and make agreeable conversation. The shocks continued into the night, but my friend and I had acclimatized quickly; we slept and awakened next morning to a still and steady day. That evening, at the opening of the exhibition, the martini glasses could be filled to the brim. There were film stars; it seemed a success, but I don’t know how many sales: none for me; I didn’t mind. Selling did not interest me very much; I fact, I liked having my paintings, and the important thing was always to do a satisfactory job on each one.

These were encouraging signs. Back in Taos that Autumn, life took on a fresh bloom with a new relationship, one that seemed to promise permanence; and, after the show in London, an extended sojourn in Europe.

My work was well on its way to London, while I went west, in the opposite direction. A friend from Taos was in New York, and she accompanied me as far as El Paso, I being, I am ashamed to say, the most dreary of travelling companions. Mt. Palomar was a special place; again I was near the world’s largest telescope, this time the 200-in., now on its summit. My friends were painters, owned a vast amount of land and had four cats who took walks with us in this wild area. I began to be soothed, and tried to get back to painting – smallish, modest, stilted, sad they were, their centers often blank, with awkward, angular, spiky shapes around the edges. Where had the exuberance gone?

Fortunately, perhaps, it was decided we would drive to New Orleans and see something of the Caribbean by taking small boats. We were out of date, there were no such boats. We took a banana boat to Cuba, then managed to get to Jamaica, which then was like smooth velvet after the noisy brashness of Cuba. It was out-of-season August, and rather pleasant. I think we may have flown back to Miami, where we parted, my friends going to pick up their car in New Orleans, I taking a bus to New York. I had nothing else to do but go to London and find out about my show. The news was not good; more precisely, there was no news: perhaps this was my least-noticed show. But here and now, emptiness surrounding me, I found the most attractive flat, so why not try living in London again and pay more attention to my mother – she was overjoyed. I even acquired a pregnant poodle. The flat had a 14-year lease, which I signed. The mistakes were piling up. My longest depression established itself, with only the briefest up-spells; it lasted two-and-a-half years. Being in England was difficult; perhaps I could do better in America. I got back probably at the end of 1950; my ever-loving and patient mother coped successfully with the 14-year lease.

We, Didi’s mother and I, left England for India by ship in November ’52. Before I had even set foot in India, while the ship was waiting “in the stream,” as they say, for a place to dock, and we could see the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal hotel, I became enormously excited to be there. On landing we were driving almost at once up to Nasik, the country somehow resembling New Mexico, only greener and more cultivated, the heights flat-topped like the mesas. For two weeks I hardly slept, just kept on saying to myself, with amazement, “I’m in India!” I was not even thinking of my vacuum, that space left by not being a painter. It was some weeks before I realized it was being filled by India itself, its sights, its people, its ways of being, its un-selfconscious beauty, even its ugliness. It no longer mattered that I was not a painter; there were other ways of filling a life.