I have recently returned from a wonderful short trip with a close friend to see this incredible exhibition, by my favourite painter – I was completely overwhelmed, thrilled and nourished as I had hoped to be – the paintings look deliciously fresh, and full of space, depth, power and energy – each one could have been stared at for hours.

We also learned about the time De Kooning spent in Italy and its influence on him, how he saw himself as part of a tradition of artists , stretching back to the renaissance, the incredible compositions mirroring the paintings we saw in the other rooms of the Accademy.

The work had a beautiful mixture of the sensuality of nature, water, landscape, light, human flesh and his journeys through pure paint, totally inspiring and it felt impossible not to be completely present, while surrounded by his work. It is how I hope to be in the studio – and in life as often as I can be, and it feels like I’ve brought a bit of that back with me.

The second place we had planned to visit was the Peggy Guggenheim collection, it was magnificent, an incredible setting, representing the work of the founding fathers of modernism, and a fantastic exhibition about the surrealist film maker Jean Cocteau, including a screening of La Belle et la Bête which was magical.

Peggy Guggenheim, the massively influential art collector, lived in this house from 1949-1979 – owning her own private Gondola -from which she explored the waterways of Venice from her own private balcony/ terrace.

Visitors are allowed to explore and sit watching the world go by – I felt like I was in a film, it was so iconic and almost unbelievably beautiful.

Quoted from Peggy Guggenheim, Peggy Guggenheim and Her Friends, 1970-76

‘I dedicated myself to my collection. A collection means hard work. It was what I wanted to do and I made it my life’s work. I am not an art collector. I am a museum.’