The coming year is bound to be a period of novelty. We are planning to move house in the New Year, and life at the moment is almost completely occupied with preparation for that event. An important task I am undertaking in relation to the move is a reappraisal of my art work. I am sure that there are pieces I will want to cherish, and probably to exhibit again. On the other hand, I am acutely aware that there are pieces which really do not do me a great deal of credit. Then, of course, there is that body of material in the middle about which it is actually rather difficult to make up one’s mind. Several days have passed now during which I have been mainly occupied with the job of reviewing everything individually, junking stuff I don’t want to keep, retaining surplus frames for possible future use, and re-wrapping carefully material I do want to keep, in preparation for the move to our new home. I am sure that you can imagine that it is all rather tiring and emotionally hard work.
As you will imagine, the process has its ups and downs. I move between, “Gosh! Did I do that?” and “Oh dear! Did I do that?”
There is an odd aspect to this process, in that I realise that I have still not awarded titles to some work I did earlier in the year. Somehow titles are a part of the creative process, and it feels strangely dissociated to be trying to do that in a vacuum. Somehow “More woodland stuff” doesn’t strike me as adequate.
I have been aware that 2024 was a very lean period, creatively speaking. It is only in the process of this systematic stock-taking that I have come to realise that between New Year 2024 and April 2025 I completed only one piece! Since then I have managed to get under way again. I do hope that creativity is not brought to a standstill again by the house move.