No: this is not a new take on he old idea of “kinetic art” (often known as the “mobile”). I want to advocate the rotation of the art works on one’s walls. A side-effect of my recent survey of my stock of work is that I have encountered once again things I had forgotten existed. The experience has not always been encouraging, of course, and some things are best forgotten. I was brought to a realisation of the fact that some of the pieces I have had displayed around the house have been there a very long time. A couple of items in the bedroom, for example, have been there since we moved into the house twenty-something years ago. Two things emerged from this discovery. For a start my wife let on that, in fact, she hadn’t always liked things I had put up, but for some reason had refrained from saying anything. Possibly more important, however, has been the realisation that after a while you actually stop seeing items which become very familiar. Surely the idea of art on the wall is that one actually looks at it and enjoys it. If this is no longer happening then it is worth asking why the stuff is there.
So: over the past couple of days there have been some changes made. The process is not necessarily completed, but is already delivering benefit. Even the opportunity to view a picture under different lighting conditions can be valuable. A landscape by Jake Attree which has been hanging in the living room since we bought it has now been moved to the bedroom. Appreciation of it in the past, I realised, was hampered by the fact that the reflection of the window disrupted the image. Now its hangs above our bed I am seeing it as I never did before. I discovered in one of my plan chest drawers a landscape sketch I did many years ago, which I had forgotten entirely. This spent a couple of days pinned on the board in the studio where I have been able to reflect on the novelty of the viewpoint and subject-matter in comparison with habits I developed later on. My wife has often expressed appreciation for a little study I did some time ago of birch saplings in winter. I never really took to it, for some reason or another, but now I’ve decided to give it another chance on the studio wall.
I think that this has been an important discovery, and I will try to make a habit of it.