A couple of weeks ago I hung my second solo show –which is not nearly as fancy as that sounds. A dozen small paintings went up on a wall at the central library in Milton Keynes.
The stakes could hardly have been lower: no money changed hands, no catalogues were printed, no invitations sent. Not a single canape was harmed as a result. I didn’t bother with a comments book, either – last time someone stole the pen.
For all that, a good bit of work was involved. I had been meaning to do this series of pictures for years; started properly collecting images and layouts at the start of 2017; spent afternoons and weekends painting and muttering right through Spring and Summer. By the time it came to hang them on the Saturday, having called the last canvas finished late on the Thursday night, I was sick of the whole thing. One of my friends asked which one I liked best, and I had to say that right then I hated them all equally.
So now they hang, securely pinned and mostly straight, upstairs in a building where the ground floor is being replaced, and is mostly boarded off with builder’s screens. After the first week, the building was closed altogether for a fortnight so that the floor could be completed. After that, Christmas. They are probably not best placed to attract an audience, but it can’t be helped. At least they might cheer the place up a bit.
I am glad I did it, though, and it felt like I had a much clearer plan of what I wanted than when I did the first one; it was all a bit more coherent. It’s good to have a chunk of work to get on with in the spring, even if it is a tedious, trudging business to finish everything off as the summer ends and the light starts to go. There was a point where it looked like the building work might mean I wouldn’t have anywhere to hang them, and I’m happy they made it. Some friends I hadn’t seen for a while helped me hang them, and it was so good to see them and they are such nice people that it was actually fun.
So now it’s done. Now what? This, as it turns out: make a website. In an effort to make like I do social media; as if I’m not writing this in a notebook, sitting on the sofa…