It’s strange to hear on the news that Robert Hughes is dead. He has been making outrageous statements all my artistic life. The greater the number of people that die, who have impinged on my life, the faster life’s stream seems to pass. It’s as if I’m a weed clinging to the bank but, at any minute now, the tide will rise or a flash flood will come and I’ll be gone. It makes life feel unreal if you think about it too closely. It makes the strands that hold us anchored feel as thin as a single hair, one that is trying to stop an elephant stampede. And when that thread snaps, Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls will be the chasm awaiting us. Hughes passing seems to have been on a slow but inexorable current as he’d been ill for a long time. I wonder if, in the end, he felt it was a relief to finally let go and wash away with the tide. I hope that it led into daylight, and not the oft-threatened everlasting night.

R.I.P Robert Hughes. Australian Art Critic who died August 6, 2012