In these subtle and penetrating essays the artist Tess Jaray considers the work of painters past and present whom she admires, from Giotto and Piero to such contemporaries as Basil Beattie and younger artists like Martin Creed. She also reflects on the questions and preferences that motivate her own practice how we apprehend beauty, the qualities of particular colours and returns often to the idea that artists are looking for patterns to make sense of the world. Jaray shares this modernist sensibility with the writer W. G. Sebald, who features in several pieces in this collection and whose presence is felt throughout. Like Sebald, in these essays Jaray approaches the mysteries of making art where it comes from and what happens when we look at it, in our heads and in our hearts.