I want this book. It's my hero Richard Dawkins, again saying everything I think is wrong with religion in 'The God Delusion'. Get a load what he says: "To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries."

Yes! Isn't it obvious? We know that Aesop's Fables are not real, nor Father Christmas or the tooth fairy. Wake up, world! A badly edited Iron Age text is no basis from which to run one's life.

Read more insightful, amusing, logical, rational and commonsensical extracts from it here.

I recently got an email from Paul M from Witney who works in Oxford. Like thousands, he suffers the hell that is getting over the Swinford Toll Bridge every morning. I thought of Paul as I rode effortlessly past the traffic on my motorcycle yesterday morning, stuck in the impromptu car park that Eynsham had become after yet another death on A40.
Paul told me: "I am sick of paying for the privilege of sitting in a jam every day ... Everybody who uses the bridge is of the same opinion - the toll needs to be stopped... until recently I felt that I was the only one going mad about this."

No Paul, you're not. You are one of thousands who sit silently, patiently, Britishly queuing to pay that stupid 5p. After yesterday's disastrous waste of time, Paul goes on: "It is fair to say I was absolutely furious and I refused to pay when I went passed." Good on you! He turned his frustrated fury into action. (I like that a lot.) He spoke to the Oxford Mail and Fox FM and got some print and broadcast coverage highlighting the daylight robbery that is the toll collection.

I'm hoping to speak to Paul very soon to see where we go with this next. It's clear that talking to the politicians, no matter how well meaning they are, is not going to be enough to persuade them to act. Words alone will not solve this problem. Massive public support and a series of actions is going to be the only way to banish this 18th century anachronism.

If you were caught up in the queues, abhor antiquated laws, time wasting, do what you can right now and SIGN this petition! If you feel moved to join our struggle, email me and tell me or leave a comment here.

Yet another fatality on the A40 caused chaos on the roads around Oxford this morning. The A40 was closed for several hours and inevitably traffic diverted over the Swinford Toll Bridge, just outside Eynsham where I live. Longstanding readers already know about my hatred of the toll collection on that bridge, as earlier this year and mounted a one-woman campaign to get the tolls scrapped. Once I had spoken to all the politicians and decision makers, I could go no further with the campaign on my own.

I needed a bunch of active supporters, and to devote every moment of my so-called 'free' time to it. I could have mustered a bunch of angry bridge users fairly easily. But devoting my free time? My free time is essentially my painting time, which as it is I don't have enough of. I would have had to stop painting. I couldn't do that. I needed to find another answer.

The answer was the purchase of my small orange motorcycle, which renders traffic jams an irrelevence and waiting frustratedly at bus stops a distant memory.

So when I started my bike this morning at 8 o'clock for the 20 minute ride into town (the journey used to take me 40 to 60 minutes) and saw the traffic queuing right back up into the village, my heart sank. 'You poor sods' I thought, knowing exactly the feelings of frustration of those stuck in cars, vans and buses. 'You poor sods' I thought as I rode effortlessly past at a steady 30mph, grateful to drivers who use their rear-view mirrors and pull over a bit to ease my overtaking. 'You poor sods' I thought, as I had to stop to let an oncoming vehicle pass, grateful for the opportunity to flick a bit of hair out of my eye. 'You poor sods' I thought, all that wasted time.

The toll bridge staff were still collecting tolls, causing a needless bottleneck, profitting out of the additional traffic. It makes my blood boil that this highway robbery is not illegal.

But while I was whizzing along on my virtually non-stop 20 minute ride, feeling sorry for all my fellow road-users caught up in the chaos, an strange, uncomfortable feeling decended on me. A curl of smile appeared on my lips. I felt smug. Smug as a really smug thing in a smugtown. How I love my tiny orange motorcycle!

I've got a week off coming up at the end of October most of which I plan to spend happily chained to my paint box. But I thought I'd treat myself to a day out looking at pictures. Unfortunately this means going to London, which I find too busy, over-crowded, smelly, dirty, frightening and just plain dangerous. Nevertheless I will put my Londonophobia aside and head to the National Gallery (NG) and the National Portrait Gallery to have a look at this lot.

I've always loved the work of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660). He is the one and only reason I want to go to Madrid, to see his work 'Las Meninas'. To my knowledge this exhibition doesn't include 'Las Meninas' (if I was a Spaniard, I wouldn't want it leaving the Spanish Main, arhhh) but it does include crackers like 'Woman frying eggs' from 1618:

The Velazquez exhibition runs from 18 October - 21 January 2007.

On at the same time at the NG is a whole pile of free exhibitions. (God, I love the NG.)

• Manet to Picasso is a rehang of works from the permanent collection. This has got to be worth punt, if only to look again at these familiar and hugely-loved works.
• This year is the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt van Rijn's birth. What a dude he was! Rembrandt 400 is a rehanging of all the great master's works owned by the NG alongside some of the works of his followers and those who influenced him.
• This year is the 100th anniversary of the death of painfully shy and crazybonkersmodernist Paul Cezanne. The NG is marking this by showing 40 of his paintings held in British collections. Cool!

As if all that is not enough I have bought myself a ticket to the David Hockney Portraits exhibition just round the corner from the NG at the National Portrait Gallery. David Hockney is a particular favourite of mine and I can hardly wait!

I'm working on a composition - which has been quite difficult to work out, actually - of a tree with loads of creatures on it, a bit like one of those scientific diagrams showing how different species have evolved from a common ancestor. I'm also slightly alarmed at how much its beginning to feel like Gustav Klimt's 'Tree of Life' - this is unintentional, but like I've said before, once I start a picture, it takes on a life of it's own and for me to fight it is futile. I learned a long time ago to be guided by the picture as it develops, irrespective of whether it's my original intention for it to go in a different direction.

I think the Klimt thing is because it's quite a decorative image and I've been using gold leaf. Previously I've used gold inks in my work, but never leaf. Actually it's a copper-based gold leaf substitute due to the outrageous price of the genuine article.

Here's a sneak preview of a section featuring a chameleon and a flying fish, with gold leaf still drying around them...

Moth thinks it's bonkers: "What's a fish doing in a tree?" he asked. "It's not" I replied, "its in a painting."

I've also painted in a rather lovely hare... but you can't see that until it's finished. (I think you'll like it.)

In a rare quiet moment at work the other day I was talking to a friend about paintings. She said how much she liked the colours in my pictures, particularly the way they seem to jump off the paper. She said she didn't like watercolours but preferred the brightness of work like mine. It suddenly occurred to me that she didn't realise I painted almost exclusively in watercolour.

Lots of visitors to my exhibitions often ask 'what medium are you working in?' and when I reply 'watercolour' they are surprised and have to look closely to check out that I'm not fibbing. I strongly believe there is no excuse for wishy washy watercolour. In fact it's very easy to allow the colour to sing and vibrate; the trick is to lay down strong colours in the first wash and then not to fiddle with it and not to overlay too many subsequent washes. The fewer the better.

Pictured above, a fjord by David Hockney, painted in yummy watercolour

David Hockney started using watercolours in 2002, after having spent many years not using it, thinking it to be a poor cousin to oils or acrylics. I remember reading an article in which he criticised watercolours as 'a medium for amateurs'.

But now he -splendidly- appears to have changed his mind. This makes me happy, because there is nothing amateur about the way I use them. Hockney understands the speed and unforgiving nature of the medium and how direct and expressive you can be with it. Have a look here at how Hockney allows watercolours to sing.

I do love our feathered friends, and they often turn up in my pictures. I spend many happy hours looking at glorious bird photography websites looking for reference material for my pictures. But yesterday while looking for pictures of hoopoes to guide me in a painting of one that I have in my head, I stumbled across Charlie's bird blog. It's an awesome catalogue of one man's travels across the world (Charlie works for an airline) to look at birds, which I thought you'd like to know about.

Most of the millions of people in the world today who do Good Things do them quietly and unnoticed, without praise or reward. And most of the people who do Bad Things stay quiet too, in the hope they can continue being bad without being noticed. Some are more brazen and have big gobs and crave power - like the monster Robert Mugabe - and simply bully, torture and kill without shame. The same could be said of that dangerous fool George W Bush who is equally as bad as his nemesis Osama Bin Laden.

And then there are those people who fervently believe they are doing Good Things but actually what they are doing is so utterly misguided and thoughtless that they do Very Bad Things under a Good Things banner. Let me introduce you to just a few of the people on my menu of Nasties.

Hugh Hefner is the founder of Playboy and for some reason has hoodwinked a generation of women into believing that if they take off their clothes and behave like constantly sexually available tarts they are somehow liberated. Shame on him. Now consider for a moment the outrageous policies of the government of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, where women's rights and social justice are not even on the agenda.

But today for obvious reasons I would like to have a jolly good rant about my particular Anti-Christ du jour: the pope, currently Benedict XVI, who is really just a German bloke who tells us that in 2006 it's OK to run our lives by a text written in the Iron Age. Get an upgrade, sir!

So what is it that I abhor about the current pope and all previous popes? Is it the childhood brainwashing and consequential perverted climate of fear that the church espouses, like a virus? Is it the role model of the virgin Mary which makes it totally impossible for any woman to be acceptable, except if she becomes a nun? Much as I loathe these things to my core, what I despise is their ridiculous notion of contraception. It is unforgivable in this over-crowded, diseased world to scare people into not using contraception which will prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of HIV and AIDS. In this one edict alone the pope has condemned millions to death, starvation and impoverishment. Ah well, not to worry. Once these miserable sinners are dead, they might get to heaven if they grovel for forgiveness enough at the pearly gates.

So on top of this death-sentence, the blinkered, bigotted old fool pours fuel on the fire of religious intolerance by quoting a medieval text which says that islam is evil. He needs to put away his bible for a few hundred years and study diplomacy, epidemiology and christianity's intolerant and bloody past before he starts commenting on other faiths. Already people have been murdered in revenge for his comments.

Is it any wonder I'm an atheist?

Cartoon by Randy McIlwaine

Two weeks ago I was at a wedding with some friends and one of who turned up with her new gentleman friend. When the time came for dancing, he and she leapt to the dance floor and started jiving and grooving and spinning in a spectacular way. They were dancing ceroc. The word is an abbrieviation of the French phrase 'C'est rock'.

I had come across ceroc before in 1985 when a English bloke I hooked up with in Australia introduced me to it. We were at a bar in Cairns, Queensland and when the music started up there was no question we wouldn't be dancing probably for the rest of the evening. I thought we'd each stand there and wiggle individually. Instead, he grabbed my right hand and whispered: 'relax and just follow my lead'. So good was his lead that within minutes I was dancing ceroc and attempting what I now know to be advanced moves. Like I say, that was 21 years ago. I've not spun a ceroc spin since. Until two weeks ago.

So at the wedding, my friend's new chap said 'c'mon, let's dance' so we took to the floor. Again, once I'd relaxed after a minute or two, he had me spinning around and laughing my head off. I didn't know any of the steps or moves, his lead was good enough that I just followed.

So last week I went to a beginner's ceroc dance class. Though not filled with enthusiasm for it like me, Moth had said he'd come along to try it, but an old knee injury was causing him some pain so he didn't come. So I went on my own, which I thought was quite daring. And last night I went again. It's really so much fun and now (in theory) I know eight beginner's moves including 'the catapult', 'the ceroc spin', 'the yo yo' and 'the back pass'.

Ceroc can be danced with grace and style. But it still looks and feels great if, like me, you have no innate grace or style. This is my kind of dancing. Get on the floor and shake yo' ass!

Stonehenge and Avebury turn up in the sketchbooks and portfolios of many artists: Turner and Constable's works of Stonehenge are well known. As a painter of ancient monuments, I am always intrigued to see how other artists tackle the subject as there are not many of us who do. It's the way the less glamorous monuments are studied that interests me the most.

I have long been an admirer of the British painter John Piper (1903-1992). Here he is in his studio:

He travelled across the British Isles recording the landscape and the buildings within it, producing a massive body of work in paint, sketches, stained glass, textiles and photography. His visual curiosity led him to look at a number of ancient monuments.

In 1978 he produced Stones and bones a series of 27 studies of dolmens. I very much want to know why he made this series, but try as I might, I can't find an online catalogue of the complete series, or indeed very much information about 'Stones and bones' at all, so instead I'll let Piper's pictures of ancient places speak for themselves.

Here's Piper's Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire. He made this image in 1975.	I've also been to Pentre Ifan. Here's my rather hasty effort.

Also in Wales, here's the dolmen at Trellyfant in Pembrokeshire...

...and down the road in Carmarthenshire, he discovered Gwal Y Filliast which he liked so much, he made two pictures:

In Cornwall, Men-an-Tol is an intriguing monument, featuring a legendary holed stone:

... and this strange thing, called the Cheesewring is a natural rock feature on Bodmin Moor	I've had a go at this one too!

Here's Piper's Stonehenge:

... and a design of Avebury for a stained glass window for a church in Wiltshire.

I went to the library to try to find out more about the 'Stones and bones' series, but discovered nothing. Anyone know anything?

Copyright permission for the Piper images is currently being sought.

My studio and Moth's office is in our attic, which we had converted last year. It's well insulated up here, so it's very snug and cosy in the winter. But earlier this summer, it was stiflingly hot: too hot even for a lizard like me! As our loft is the one room where we spend most of our waking hours we decided to have air conditioning installed. The installation engineers came today. So now I can make cool pictures in the cool air - much as Frank Hurley did in Antarctica in 1915 on Shackleton's 'Endurance' expedition. Mmm - I feel so coooool! Ciao!

I just love a rip roaring tale of drama on the high seas! So how pleased I was to see that the BBC was showing a two part drama about Blackbeard, "the most audacious and charismatic pirate in history, English-born Edward Teach." according to the BBC website.

It continues: "Charming but fearless, he terrorised American waters in the early 18th century, plundering his way to notoriety and finally driving the colonial government to hunt him down, bringing the golden age of piracy to an end." Tsk! Bloody do-gooders...

Anyway the first part was shown last night. Actors in fabulous flamboyant costumes staged fabulous flamboyant fight scenes with clashing cutlasses and cannons and said things like: "I'll be the judge of that, Mr Smith", and "I'll wager he's not a Brizzol man" and "Ooh aarh!" Beautiful wooden ships glided in full sail over golden waters in a limpid Turneresque stylee, though it was strangely windless.

And at the heart of it was Blackbeard, wearing a bandanna and a tricorn, bristling with pistols and cutlasses with a beard down to his chest, played by the almost too perfect James Purefoy. Sigh!

The golden age of piracy may not be over, however...

Some paintings take me ages to put together. Others seem to just fall out of my head onto the paper. And so it was with From the four winds:

It shows a herring gull soaring over South Stack RSPB bird reserve on Anglesey, looking south over Caernafon Bay towards the Lleyn peninsula on the horizon, as a pair of choughs swoop over heathery cliffs. There are plenty of nameable geographical features in the painting, but it is a painting about the place, rather than a of it.

This painting has been forming in my head since we went to South Stack last week but it needed a couple of days for 'mind-gestation' before I could get it out. The image of it in my head has been so strong that it took me only three short evenings to paint it; a total of only about seven hours work, every moment of which I loved.

I thought about the dazzling bright colours, the dizzying heights, the stiff breeze and the view which went on for miles and miles… I used a couple of sketches from my sketchbook, including this one...

and this photo...

...to remind me of what it felt like to be there, and photos of gulls and choughs which Moth took.

The painting's title comes from a song by Gordon Giltrap from his 1976 album 'Visionary' which I listened to repeatedly while making the picture.

I hope you like the painting as much as I do!

I sometimes get email or comments from people who think I'm 'The Other' Jane Tomlinson, as she is known in this house. It's an easy mistake to make; we share a name, after all. For the avoidance of doubt, see if you can spot the difference between 'The Other' Jane Tomlinson (pictured left) and me!

'The Other' Jane Tomlinson is battling breast cancer, whereas I enjoy the luxury of merely fearing it. Despite incurable illness, she undertakes remarkable sporting deeds - marathon running and continent-wide bike rides - to raise money for charity. I, on the other hand, wouldn't run for a bus. My occasional ventures into the sporting world consist of swimming in the river and riding horses for the sheer fun of it. For her astonishing charitable work, 'The Other' Jane was awarded an MBE by HRH The Queen. Whereas I work full-time for a young women's charity whose patron is HRH The Queen.

'The Other' Jane lives in Leeds. Whereas I have only been to Leeds, and married a man from that grand Yorkshire city. She married a Tomlinson. I was born one. 'The Other' Jane is inspirational. Errr.... I'm not! I'm simply an artist who hopes to find enough inspiration to make the next painting.

See, there are lots of differences between she and me! However, I suspect there are a number of characteristics that 'The Other' Jane Tomlinson and me proudly share; stubborn determination, singlemindedness, the love and total support of our husbands, a wish to do good things and a huge love of life. I sincerely hope 'The Other' Jane Tomlinson has many more years to enjoy all the wondrous things this world offers.

In the spring I was contacted by someone from Southampton University Hospital who was looking for pictures. She found me through the Artweeks website, saw my painting Thames Magic at Eynsham and knew immediately I could make the paintings she wanted for some waiting rooms in their new cardiac unit.

She wanted Thames Magic, but it's not for sale. I said I could paint something for her in a similar spirit.

She told me that the people who will use the waiting rooms may have just heard very bad news about their loved ones, be feeling hopeless, vulnerable or even just bereaved. She said she wanted some pictures to uplift viewers and provide something beautiful, thought-provoking and spiritual - without being overtly religious - to inspire hope. I was honoured that she felt that my paintings might be able to offer some solace to people. If my paintings could offer the tiniest crumb of comfort, then it would be worth the effort.

She wanted landscapes featuring water and wildlife, air, light and colour. Right up my street, then! My ideas were entirely based on what I would like to look at if I was feeling hopeless, frightened or sad.

I first painted Fields of magic at Uffington:

It features a lark flying over the chalky landscape of Uffington, the highest point in Oxfordshire and various native species of butterflies lurking into the fields. The Ridgeway, the oldest road in continuous use in Europe, snakes its way off into the distance on the right.
Float on followed. The inspiration for this came from a fishing trip with my son.
I blogged about how this painting developed here.

And finally I made Summer meadow.

Some people might say that money is wasted on art in hospitals, that money should be spend on nurses and doctors. Maybe. Drugs and nursing staff may be able to treat the physiological; but a positive spirit, helped perhaps by a beautiful image, can feed the soul in ways that transcend science, such is the power of the human mind.

Last week when we were in Anglesey we stayed in a cottage closest in the world to Barclodiad-y-Gawres, a neolithic chambered cairn just a quarter of a mile away on a headland between two fantastic beaches. This was entirely accidental, but splendid good fortune!

Barclodiad-y-Gawres is a grassy mound from the outside, but inside contains a lovely burial chamber lined with huge stones, some of which have swirly and zigzaggy carvings.

Swirls and zigzags are common patterns in ancient art, one of the finest examples being Gavrinis in Brittany and Newgrange in Ireland. I believe that when the chamber was in use about 4,000 - 5,000 years ago, these patterns would have been painted with bright colours giving a magical, psychedelic 'wow' factor to shamens conducting ceremonies in the tomb by flickering lamplight.

Anglesey is blessed with some really superb prehistoric (neolithic and bronze age) sites, but sadly some of them have been unsympathetically 'restored'. Barclodiad-y-Gawres now has a concrete internal dome to protect the delicate structure which is not exactly nice but does allow modern visitors to understand its construction more clearly. Other sites aren't so lucky.

Many of the dolmens like Bodowyr and Lligwy are caged in behind nasty, high, ugly, pointy railings placed, in my opinion, too close to the monument. But other sites have suffered a worse fate thanks to restoration by CADW, the official guardian of the built heritage of Wales.

Bryn Celli Ddu is fine burial chamber, a stunning grassy mound within a small henge. Inside there's an intriguing standing stone, so the chamber must have been built around it when prehistoric improvements and developments were made.

But more recent improvements and developments by CADW include two grotesque concrete lintels within the chamber. After standing for 4,000 years without them was this sledgehammer approach really necessary or is this another example of health and safety gone mad?

Presaddfed is a fabulous tomb, but again screwed by thoughtless restoration. Some ugly timber pitprops now hold up the capstone.

The portal stone is surely big enough to hold it up? And if over-cautious health and safety deems additional bracing necessary surely a clean single metal bar lurking immediately behind the portal stone would have done the trick. Instead we get enough timber to build a small boat.

But surely Ty Newydd takes the award for the sloppiest restoration in Wales.

Whichever cowboys decided to use pillars of bricks to hold up capstone need their brains concreted. I suppose I should be thankful that the capstone is still up but this beautiful monument has been very badly scarred by its repairs.

I shouldn't slag off CADW too much. They provide really excellent signage and information boards at many sites.

But it wasn't all burial chambers. We also visited some really wonderful standing stones at Mein Hirion: (how much like a penis is the one I'm standing next to?! )

Checked out the longest place name in the UK:

And readers of my previous post already know there was some time for sketching:

All photos: Moth Clark