As were are preparing to move house in the relatively near future a good part of my time is spent putting into some kind of order the work that has accumulated over the past three decades. I know that it would have been a good idea had I been more strict on a regular basis about the things I keep and the things I throw away. It didn’t work out like that; but really I do not want to continue to give houseroom to a pile of stuff that I do not find interesting let alone worthwhile. This all sounds very worthy, but I ask you to pause and think about just what is involved in this task.
OK: my studio is located on the ground floor, and a proportion of my stuff is kept on racks there. Unfortunately, I estimate that this applies to only about a half of my stored work. The rest occupies space in the spare bedroom. Because there is suitable table upstairs the work of actually assessing and rewrapping pieces, or de-framing them ready for destruction, takes place in the bedroom. As a consequence, I find that a large part of the day is passed trekking up and down stairs, carrying work either for assessment, storage or disposal. I have not counted the number of times I have actually been up or down stairs, but my guess is that we are looking at something in the region of fifty ascents/descents in a day. Each trip, of course, involves carrying at least one picture, some of which are quite large.
Measured by the expenditure of calories I am beginning to think that art conservation might be a more serious contribution to my fitness than my weekly visit to the climbing wall.