It might strike you as very strange (as it did me) to find that I have actually enjoyed a day without art. The entire day has been spent in the garden putting right the ravages of a month of rain, and reducing the height of a hedge which our neighbour found to be overshadowing their garden too much. The day has been passed in fairly strenuous activity, and not only without a thought for art but pretty well without a thought for anything beyond the task in hand. (I think I have probably been practising what Auguste Comte termed “mental hygiene”.) Coming after a period in which I have been engaged obsessively with exhibiting my work, this experience has been surprisingly refreshing.
I wonder how much time would have to pass in this frame of mind before I started to feel anxiety. There will be no opportunity to find out just yet, because a good part of tomorrow will be spent preparing cards and prints for the South Square show, and then invigilating it.