Robert Diament

But in the essay you've written about the show, you talk about how your mum and your dad sort of made you pay attention.

There was this phrase, pay attention.

And it really stuck out to me because that's actually how I feel about your mum's work.

I feel like it's her work that sort of made me stop still in my tracks and sort of think about art in a different way.

And then, of course, Frida Kahlo was another early formative experience for me.

But Paula's work was so specific because it was so detailed that you had no choice when you're looking at her work but to pay attention.

Because she's trying to tell you things, maybe not even deliberately, it's just coming out subconsciously in the work.

She's got so many layers.

And I know she described them, particularly when drawing, about secrets.

And I really wanted to chat to you about this idea of the secret, because I think it's such a poetic way of thinking about drawing, about revelation and how the truth can come out of essentially something that is a fiction because you're drawing something.

It's artificial in a weird way, even though it's totally authentic because it's coming from the body, but it's still a construction.

And I loved this idea of secrets.

And that was some of your happiest memories, both of your memories.

I'm Welsh, luckily.

I also have always responded to these kind of tales that she will tell, almost like moral guidance, which you might have been told from a higher authority at some point, but how they're kind of subverted or the moral tale is somehow turned on its head within her work.

And you were showing me a drawing.

in the other room with a load of pigs and there's a woman in these fine, you know, very fancy dress.

And it was this moralistic tale of kind of value and, you know, material things and how we can get overwhelmed by material things.

It's amazing.

You actually also showed me an original print next door.