Framed.

Sunlight blazes today - icy, the pause before the oncoming storms by all accounts. I'm out of the house earlier today, having painted again, to get some paintings framed. 

The week away from painting has been resolved with a weekend of snooze - maybe the illness is clearing, or maybe it's the chance to splurge on canvas, but I feel ready to engage again. I'm painting from a prepared sketch that I've been meaning to do for a while, so it has the benefit of me not having to worry about composition and colour, but simply being able to let the paint breathe and mingle with only loose guidance from me. Later in the week will bring the fiddly detail, and the need to focus - for now I can be relaxed and spontaneous (interestingly the predictive text predicted the word 'spontaneous' from 's', so maybe not so much eh?).

A chance meeting over the weekend has brought the opportunity for me to hang my paintings in a space outside my house - hence the need to get the watercolours framed. There's no cash yet, but they'll be seen, and maybe noticed. It also gives me an excuse to kick myself up the arse and get commercial stuff sorted - frames, cards, costs and so on.

This is stuff that always seems secondary, but - you know, is quite important if you want to get your stuff out there. I've mentioned before that it screws with my head a bit making a work of art out of an art work if you know what I mean, but there has to be some thought and purpose in the process, a re-evaluation of what you hope people will see and think. 

The trouble is firstly it makes you go back to a piece that you thought was good, and now maybe you start to doubt it; and secondly the nagging thought that what you decide now may ruin the overall effect. I mean there is a time pressure as you choose frames, mounting and so on, and although I really think when it comes to colour gut instinct is 90% of the choice, that other 10% can really make itself known if there's a second of doubt. 

So you pause, breathe, go with the gut, and hope in ten days you won't hate what you chose, or worse, what you painted. After all, this has to be done, you can't just paint for yourself forever... can you?