The Dot Books, of which I am now on my third, started as drawing books to keep me occupied during in-between moments. What I like about drawing is that my pen is as happy circling a puddle as a princess. My thoughts are my own concern. I do find after all that I am not just drawing any old thing. I have to be excited. Not quite sketchbooks as such, I want the dot books to appear almost like a publication while I carry them around. The only difference is that they are original. The book starts plain white and I put a dot on the front so I know which way to open it up. A dot is percussive, something like a clash of cymbals with the sound down, the physical starting point of every handmade masterpiece in the world. I saw Lucio Fontana’s slashed canvas paintings again recently and I thought they represent that particular moment almost perfectly.

__The show takes the form of a witty, bright conversation with Dulwich’s surprisingly classy permanent collection. There are sketches of paintings by Teniers and Brouwer, and an answer to Gainsborough’s portrait The Linley Sisters, with Ocean’s two extremely contemporary-looking daughters sitting in for the original models. And the Teniers, a winter scene, also inspired the four-painting sequence of buildings, one for each season. How’s my driving has the feel of an album – a couple of cover versions, some light, quick, filler interludes (a series of drawings from Ocean’s Dot Book) and a central sequence, the four seasonal paintings, that the record company would want to release as singles . . .__—Nick Hornby, The Independent on Sunday, 13 July 2003