…. and like Fagin, in the musical Oliver, I find I “have to think it out again”. The past couple of days have been spent, in part, sorting through some old work I have not really looked at for years. (This is no particular sign of virtue, I hasten to add. It should have happened a long time ago, but I have been forced into it by the fact that my storage racks were overflowing.) The experience has been instructive.
There have been those pieces that I was resigned to dismissing as youthful follies or the result of misplaced temporary enthusiasm, but now I see them in a new way, and find them refreshing and quite original. I might have exhibited them once, but for various reasons they have never seemed suitable to bring out on subsequent occasions. Three pieces in particular I have been sprucing up as I can now see exhibition opportunities for them.
Then, on the other hand, there are (too many!) items I had remembered fondly, but on re-acquaintance find disappointing. The experience, I imagine, must be like meeting a former lover many years after the end of the affair and wondering whatever it could have been that excited that degree of passion. One such painting, unearthed yesterday, I had in my memory as being particularly dramatic turned out, on re-acquaintance, to be a mixture of pretension and lack of artistic focus. I cut it into two pieces because there are still usable materials there, recognising that its sheer size was an indication of its original over-estimation of its own importance.
These things can turn out very well. I mentioned in a previous post that some of my recent work has just been photographed by a friend of mine. I had had doubts about one of these, in which I had painted over a heavily textured piece, and the original surface continued to affect the new design. Was the persisting texture just a distraction, or did it actually add something to the new version? He immediately asked about the texture, and assured me that it added something to the new composition.
There is a long way to go yet with this task. I have done most of the work sorting the racks of framed items, but not even looked at the plan-chest or the portfolios in which unframed material is stored. No doubt some of this stuff will turn out to be of sentimental value, and it is even possible that I might want to give a few things another lease on life. I’m taking a brief rest before steeling myself for the task! I have no doubt that, one way or another, there will be a good number of “Fagin moments”.