Friday 6th March

It's been a no painting week this week. Natasha took some time off around her birthday and we spent 3 days doing stuff for our holiday and general life admin. We've got a lot on and I can't really justify time in my studio at the moment. On Monday Natasha needed to go to Newcastle Metro Centre which is my idea of hell but it was her birthday. She did her stuff and I came back with a tattoo which she had promised me as a birthday present in July and which we hadn't found the time to arrange. It's a relatively low key "Comfortably Numb" in script on my inner forearm which adequately sums up my life and outlook as I get older. The Pink Floyd song also has the best guitar solo ever in it (in my opinion).

Having said that we did find time to deliver the new "woodland paintings" to Tallantyre Gallery in Morpeth on Wednesday.  Unfortunately the gallery manager and the owner were both in London but she was happy for me to leave them with the gallery assistant.  Fortunately,  this meant that she hadn't had time to sort any returns which is good news as having rid my studio of a pile of paintings recently the last thing I needed was to put more paintings in there. After we dropped those paintings off we drove over to Gallery 45 to see my work hanging in the "Wild Northumberland  Exhibition" I was involved in. I have to say I was disappointed.  There was an exhibition in the top long room of an artist who's work was awful. I don't usually like to criticise other artist work but although the silk screen prints were acceptable,  the paintings were not up to a gallery standard. The gallery weren't expecting them as he had only showed them the prints and they weren't happy either. Unfortunately this reflects badly on the gallery and therefore other artists work.

Although I had 5 paintings in the main gallery downstairs my 8 watercolours were in a rather dingy space upstairs and having recently been relocated, were not labelled. 

I don't hold out much hope for sales!

Last weekend Natasha was in Chesterfield visiting friends and Dylan was in Manchester.  I was home alone with Luna. Most of my weekend consisted of watching sport and walking the dog. I did, however,  manage to make a tentative start on the daunting task of sorting my studio for the house move. 

Many people who know me are aware that I paint to the background of audiobooks.  I can't really paint without them which makes my art demo/workshops and bit of a strange experience.  I've been listening to audiobooks whilst painting for many years now. Originally it was cassettes with stories much abridged. I bought some and many were donated to me friends and relatives. I moved on to cd's, less abridged and in some cases unabridged,  which I collected avidly.  I also used to borrow from public libraries and soon went through Chesterfield, Wingerworth and Clay Cross then when we moved here, Alnwick and Morpeth until I joined "Amazon Audible" as it was cheaper than paying library fees. I now have a few hundred books saved on the cloud that I have access to and get more every month. I of course, kept all my cassettes and cd's which take up space in my studio. 

I decided to be ruthless and cull all the cassettes, which I knew I wouldn't listen to again and are probably damaged anyway. I couldn’t, however,  get rid of the audiobooks on cd. 

I now listen to audible on my phone but do have a retro stack system and speakers which I hope to use again in my new studio when we move. I'm sure some tech savvy youngster will be able to sort how to play the audiobooks through my speakers and I can always listen to the 3 large boxes of books on cd's which I have retained through my system if the years of languishing in my mould, damp, cobwebbed and mouse infected studio hasn't buggered it up!! Or more sensibly, to save space, use the little one we no longer use in the house!

The holiday is racing towards us. We fly on the 15th. I need to sort my little travel painting pack out and try to get it in a suitcase!