Friday 25th September
This week has been a little more settled than last. Quick patient update. Marissa is now home with a care package in place and doing well. Dylan is home (for now) with 2 hairline fractures in his ankle but is able to walk around without too much discomfort.
My mounts did arrive from Evri nearly on time and I was able to mount and send my Cornish watercolours to Jane Adams in St Just. I also posted my watercolour cards to Jetty in Oban. Whilst on a roll I decided to do some more watercolours for Beckstones Gallery in The Lakes. They sold 4 more recently and having sold 3 not long ago I thought they could probably do with some more. I managed 6 more and had bought some frames. I spent a few hours framing, taping and labelling them ready to send. This process, as I’ve described before, is tedious but satisfying when completed. The frames are real wood and real glass which Beckstones insist on so will need careful packing if I decide to post them. I do have 3 large paintings for them yet to be varnished and so we may decide to deliver if we can get a free weekend!
Natasha received a post regarding The Northumberland Open Exhibition to be held at The Woodhorn Centre in February. This is the Exhibition that I keep missing because despite registering interest I never receive any information about. I have decided to submit 2 paintings this time which have to go before a selection panel before acceptance. We’ve been to the exhibition before and I think I should be OK if I get the submissions in reasonably quickly. They only accept 500 paintings on a first come first served basis (acceptance wise) I have one painting already with a good Buckinghams frame on it and I have another smaller Buckinghams frame I can use for another painting (yet to be painted)!
I also bought some smaller 20cmx20cm frames at a very reasonable price and framed some of my seascapes I had left from AITG. I’ve yet to decide what to do with those.
All these bits and pieces jobs are filling my time but are masking my unusual reluctance to get down to some more serious work. We are all a bit unsettled at the moment with house stuff, weekends away and other commitments. My studio is not a nice place to be and I am struggling to find a reason to paint. This is unusual as normally I have to be advised that paintings will pile up in my studio if I continue to paint! I need a clear head to work properly and at the moment my head is full of unrelated stuff. Art in the Garden concentrated my mind for several weeks but I am now suffering some or of anticlimactic artists block, something I’ve never had before. I think it’s partly a lack of purpose? I, for the first time in many years, am questioning, why am I painting and who am I painting for? Social media doesn’t help as I see all my contemporaries, who appear to be incredibly busy all the time! This may not be the truth of it but it appears that way. I follow many fellow artists on social media platforms, mainly out of interest in their work but as Natasha suggested, perhaps I should leave social media alone for a while and set myself some goals! I know there are ways to get me out of my current state. Change my media, style, subject matter. Experiment, create a different body of work for a new gallery. Sort my website out, paint bigger, paint smaller, swap paintings around in galleries (although this does involve a commitment of time and does inevitably involve receiving work back to fill my studio space again).
I find it understandable but frustrating that I can’t control what galleries do with my work. Whether they display it or how much they display or whether it’s just on their website? I know galleries who have lots of my work but can’t for obvious reasons display it all the time or in any quantity. I also have galleries that have all my work on display all the time
I need to pull myself away from all this navel gazing and get on with stuff.