Hello again, wow i'm really starting to
get back into this blogging malarkey, here's hoping the enthusiasm
lasts! This one will be kind of a personal post but hey, I never said it would all be fun and games and delicious cakes! Before you start reading the rest I feel I should probably warn you that this post is rather heavy on the old parentheses. (enjoy)
Okay so yesterday morning I got a rather groovy
email from a chap I haven't spoken to in over a year (hence the title of the post) but it's nothing overly dramatic or particularly too exciting (at least probably not to you, I mean obviously it is to me or I wouldn't be blogging about it would I) it's just that he bought some big ol' paintings from me last summer and wanted to send me an update on their current whereabouts.
For those of you that follow me on my
various social media accounts such as
Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram or
Pinterest (shameless plugs I know but this is a blog after all!) you
might remember that around this time last year I was just wrapping up
my BA degree in Fine Art and showing my work in the degree
exhibition.
Although I took a lot of progress shots for my degree file (and for
Instagram) I was going through my prolonged 'no blogging' spell so I never actually documented the process on here. Obviously i'm not about to regale you with a whole start-to-finish essay about something I did a year ago, but I am going to at least explain a bit about what I did.
For my final pieces, I produced four large scale acrylic and posca paintings
for the show on 1819 x 607mm (about 6 x 2 foot each) boards and in case
you missed it last year, this is what they looked like up on the wall in the exhibition space.
The paintings were pretty big, a real
pain in the patootie to move anywhere and even more fun to actually
put up on the wall. But once they were up in the space they were kind of striking enough
that people paused to look at them, which is all I could ask for
really! If you can't quite visualise the sizes mentioned, here's a
snap of one of the exhibition visitors gazing up in adoring wonder at one of
the paintings (actually she's my friend Porscha but I did NOT pay her
to pose for the photo, honest!).
Followed by the only photo of me with
the paintings in existence, a slightly blurred farce of a photo. Unfortunately i'm blinking like a total
moron in the pic, but ignore the fact that I look like a bewildered
sloth and focus instead on the paintings in comparison to my height (i'm wearing heels by the way). Now
you'll understand why they were such a chore to lug about and why
they took me so ruddy long to paint (a full week on each board from start to finish in case you
were wondering).
Well, since the degree show was held
during the TT festival (more about that
HERE) in a public space (a
local shopping centre) we got all sorts of wonderful visitors from
all over the world and as luck would have it, one afternoon I got a
call saying that someone had been in to the exhibition requesting to buy my work.
Initially I didn't think much of this
since i've had people ask to buy my work before and then I never hear
from them again. I mean I was kind of attached the paintings at this
point, i'd spent the last month huddled over my kitchen table slaving
away at them night and day. I drank so much Red Bull through curly straws during the painting
process that I now can't even look at a can without shuddering or
immediately thinking of Lana Del Rey (her music set on repeat pretty much fueled the entire month of painting).
I'd coated aforementioned table in spatters of
paint and for a solid month my flatmate couldn't actually use the
table at all because it was so covered in pots of paint, brushes and
massive flipping wooden boards! They were the biggest paintings i'd ever
attempted and I wasn't even sure that I wanted to actually sell them. They were, and still are, incredibly personal pieces of work.
Then I began to realise that if I
didn't sell them I would no doubt be stuck with them forever. Which
means I would probably either damage them by accident or get really
angry one night and set fire to one, or all, of them while screaming
insults at the flames.
I have a strange relationship with my work but
these paintings were 'my girls' and however much I loved them (and I
did) I knew it would be easier if they weren't cluttering up the
place. I was undeniably flattered that someone had even momentarily considered buying my work so I got in touch with the prospective buyer and quickly
realised that he was actually serious!
Obviously I was SUPER excited by this
news, it's nice to know that someone likes your work enough to want to actually pay money for it! A few emails later and the deal was secured (as it were) and a
few weeks after that, I shipped the paintings over to England and met the
buyer off the boat (yes it was as thrilling as it sounds). Anyway, at
the time when I sold the paintings I genuinely didn't know what was
going to happen to them. The buyer said he planned to hang them in
his house and that he'd send me a photo, but months went by and I had
other things to think about so I just sort of began to forget about
'my girls'.
The last time I saw them all together
side by side was about a fortnight after the exhibition came down, stacked in my kitchen the day I packaged them up for their trip overseas.
I bought a funk-load of parcel paper as well as 100m of bubble wrap
(possibly the best purchase i've ever made in my life as there are
literally hours of fun to be had with a roll of bubble wrap that is
100m long) and I carefully wrapped up the paintings ready to set sail
for Heysham.
When we docked in England I met the guy
that was buying the paintings and just over a month after i'd first
set brush to board I handed them all over and they were no longer
my responsibility. Which is probably a good thing since they'd have
undoubtedly ended up stacked next to my fridge if i'd have kept them,
or more likely plonked behind the sofa gathering dust.
Anyway since then I haven't thought
much about them, like I said i've had other things to think about.
But over the past few days i've found myself pondering over their
sale and wondering whatever became of them in their new home in
Cambridgeshire. Did they get put up in a house, did they get sold on, were they shoved away in a garage? So in true nosy-parker style I messaged the buyer just to try and find out what happened to them.
Well as luck would have it, as I said at the start of
the post (before I started wittering on uncontrollably) I received an
email from the chap that bought them and he sent me this...
and this -
"Hello Jade, I'm sorry that I never got around to sending you pictures before so here you go. As you can see they are hanging on the wall in my house. Have had no problems with them, they been very well behaved! I'm very fond of them and will not be selling them."
So now I know, and now YOU know as well. They're safe and sound in a hallway hanging above a staircase. Which is frankly pretty awesome to know! I like the idea of them keeping watch over the stairs, no doubt intimidating people with their candy coloured ferocity (at least I like to think that's what they do). It's kind of brilliant knowing that my paintings are still being displayed, now all I need to do is crack on and start painting some NEW ones.
And on that sentimental note I think I shall draw this post to a close. Mostly because i've exhausted the '( )' buttons and I can't really think of anything else to say. Lucky you.
It's not really a great ending to a blog, it's not even a very good ending, but it's an ending all the same.
So until next time, that's all folks!
thanks for reading (or if you just looked at the pictures, thanks for that too)
bye for now...
