I never realised, before taking up art seriously, just how stressful exhibiting can be. The situation is probably different if you are fairly well up the “tree” of prestige and success, when a great deal of the strain of getting work before the public is carried by the gallery which represents you. If you are (as I guess I am) numbered among the proletariat of the art world, then a great deal of time and effort can be expended pursuing opportunities to exhibit, and then preparing the material to put on show.
This can be a surprisingly onerous task. Decisions need to be made about what to include, how to present the work, how to distribute publicity to the best advantage, and the form that will take. Every venue appears to have different rules/facilities for actually hanging the stuff on the wall. Looking ahead to my Lincoln Cathedral show, for example, I have had to devise a novel system of placing miniature easels* on the stone shelf in front of the hanging works, each bearing information about the work above it. Creating a poster for the occasion took little time, but researching the contact details of places which might possibly be willing to display this information was surprisingly time-consuming. A significant part of the strain involved can be created by the tardyness of correspondents from whom you have requested information. To take one example of this: another venue at which I will be showing work in August has yet to tell me just how many pieces I will be able to submit as part of a group exhibition.
I believe that I will get back to it before long, but it seems to be ages since I was able to paint or draw anything…. which is actually supposed to be the point of all this.
*No: not “weasels”!