The view which I have held for some time emphasises spontaneity. You see something: you fall in love with it at first sight: you buy it. This is the way I have approached the purchase of pieces by other artists. I would not call myself a “collector” by any means, but when I do buy a piece the process is over in about five minutes.
That appears to have been the way in which my latest sale found its new home. There it was, on the wall of the Square and Compass. In walks the potential purchaser and his family, looking for a meal and a drink. They spot my piece on the wall …. and the rest is history.
Perhaps there is cause for thought in my recent experience in Cardiff. There is a gallery in the city I visit every time I am in the city (the Martin Tinney Gallery) because I have learned that there is always interesting stuff there, typically by painters I have not encountered before. This latest visit was no exception. To my amazement and delight, however, I discovered that their current display includes five prints by David Jones. Jones died in 1974, but I have encountered his work on several occasions in the past five years, in different contexts. A friend referred me to his poetry several years back (In Parentheses), and my interest took off from there. He had wide-ranging interests, and I used his typography as an ingredient in the piece I showed last year in the Museum of Modern Art in Machynlleth (Wales). He was a strange and idiosyncratic artist, but I keep coming back to him. Then, suddenly last week, I was faced with the possibility of buying for myself one of his prints!
My response was curious, because I didn’t head immediately for the curator’s desk, asking for the red dots. A part of my problem was that I could not decide which, if any of them, I liked the best. So I decided that I would return with my wife (apart from anything else there were works by other artists in the show I thought she would like) and we would decide then. For the next two days I debated in my own head the question of whether I would buy one, and if so which would it be.
Accordingly, on Saturday morning we went to the gallery only to find that there was a discrepancy between the opening hours printed on the leaflet I had picked up, and their current schedule. The gallery was closed, and we were committed to returning to Bradford the next day. Had I lost my opportunity? Should I have followed my usual rule of making an immediate and spontaneous decision? Does the fact that I did not do so indicate that I am not actually committed to this project after all?
Everything is not lost, of course. It is still open to me to ring the gallery and place can order. Even so, have I in fact answered my own question by the very fact of my initial hesitation? We shall see!