Again, such interesting times! So full of all that life encompasses. Just when I think the day has revealed all that it can, something else comes into awareness.
I realise that with only 5 days left hanging in the Gallery, I have been in a process of evaluation. It is new in this capacity. It is a summing up of what has been achieved, learnt, understood, overcome, and released. A purging! I thought I experienced what was to experience in my paintings whilst making them. I hadn’t expected they would continue to house Messages for me.The last 15days have had incredible turns of nature, with the worst fires on record and flooding in the exteme. People’s lives are under going massive and painful changes, lessons of endurance. The same Message is coming from these events, Love is really all that there is!
It has been an extraordinary time for eveyone. With this in mind, I have taken to the 3 paintings that remain in my studio, (the ones that were not finished in time for the exhibition.) with Deep Olive and Copper highlights. Regeneration and Growth, Hope, Calm in the Olive and the spark of something Golden and reflective in the Copper. It has helped me to facilitate my own processing of emotional overload. My hope that they may help others similarily.
It is a time of moving forward. This motion has enabled me to reach a place in ownership of the paintings, not so long ago, I would have found hard to fathom. A letting go. No longer needing to be in custodyof them, to feel them. I originally thought of housing them in the Gallery, akin to my children going off to camp. A case of missing them until their return. A temporary arrangement. It was shortly after opening night, I realised some had sold and others were being enquired about. It made real the nature of selling my paintings. It is usually one or two that sell at a time. They are part of a much bigger story that remains and so I just keep painting without any major interruption to the flow. With the Exhibition, it has been a huge chunk suddenly removed, not just from the studio but from our home! Every room is different now to how it was before we took them down to the Gallery. Old favorites that had been stored to make room for the show work to hang safely, have redicovered a place in our daily life. It has been nice to see them again. I have also missed some personal favorites amongst the Messages.
It is time to le go though. Those periods have been realised and belong in the wonderful fabric of past. I feel ready to go blindly again, feeling my way to the next point. Trusting the flow and enjoying the unfoldement! So it is with ambiguity I plan to retrieve the paintings on Sunday. The works that have sold will probably be picked up from the Gallery on the day we dismantle and the rest we load up and bring home. I will have a set day or maybe weekend for viewing by those people that have expressed interest but couldn’t make the show. I have to; to move forward.
Albert Comper, a professional photographer is coming to record the new works that haven’t yet been documented. So they won’t be lost when they are sold. I’ll compile a book (hard copy and digital) with copies in a folder for easy viewing. I have learned that organisation and documentation are the best way to honor the collection. An authenticity in full.
Here’s hoping for a week that is easier than the last to digest and appreciate.