This morning I was packing up some work to take to an exhibition at the South Square Centre. The principal item I have in mind, painted specially for the occasion, has never been exhibited before, and I asked my wife for a suggestion of how much I should ask for it. I will not embarrass her by stating the sum she suggested, but it didn’t exceed by very much the amount I had just paid for the frame. At a rough guess the difference would have meant that I was paying myself about ten pence an hour for my labour as an artist. (Actually, if the commission that would be collected by the gallery in the event of a sale is taken into consideration, I would be left with nothing for myself.) One of the greatest difficulties facing artists, it seems to me, is that the public at large have not the faintest idea of what are the costs we have to bear in producing work, and discount almost entirely our time and effort in producing work.