Before agreeing to exhibit at a venue, find out whether or not the space in which your work will hang is on the first floor. Once again I have spent a good part of the day carrying my work downstairs from the gallery in order to bring it home. Why does it always seem to be the case that wherever I show my work I have to carry it up at least one flight of stairs, and then after the show bring it all down again? (To make matters worse, of course, some of the racks in which I store my work at home are also on the first floor.) I’m not sure whether it makes for fitness or just exhaustion.
Even so, it has been a good day. I got to the gallery to discover that I had sold another piece. Then my friend Andy, who does most of my framing, kindly used his van in order to bring a very large item back to the house. The story behind this is interesting. I wanted, in my “Almscliff” exhibition, to demonstrate my obsessive engagement with this place over my painting career. I included a piece done many years ago, when I had just started to paint in a serious way. I have to admit that it was, without exaggeration, megalomaniac in size. I did manage to get it to the gallery in the car, but realised that this was actually a very dangerous operation because having fitted myself and the picture into the vehicle I could hardly move. Andy saved me from repeating this folly by bringing it home after the exhibition. I guess he must have recognised that a dead customer is no longer a customer.
Now that my exhibiting frenzy is over, as is the snooker World Championship, I suppose that tomorrow I might be able to begin the process of rediscovering normality. You never know, I might even be able to paint again.