Autofocus on the the prime directive

‘Why the fuck do I put myself through this?’ I asked myself this morning at 6am as I drove to London to hang my paintings in the Arts Now Fair exhibition. Is it ego? Well, only partly. I want to get my paintings out there and that comes with a whole bag on anxiety. The anxiety was brought by the exhibition being in a new venue. I’d got used to exhibiting in the Bargehouse on the South Bank, which is a great space, so driving to Copeland Park in Peckham was literally new territory for me. Driving the paintings up was the easiest way of doing it, I must have driven to London before but it is a whole other challenge.

I got to the venue stupidly early so I could get parking and bumped into Leila Bibizadeh the wonderful curator, who opened the space a bit early, and soon it was a hive of activity as we all set up our work. I hung mine pretty quickly, this ain’t my first rodeo so I knew what I wanted to do, and I was showcasing the ‘AB Savage’ paintings. I possibly could have hung one other, I was tempted to bring up ‘Fragile’ but that may have been gilding the lily because the five paintings I chose really work well together

UPDATE!!! 10th July - Maaaaaan, it’s taken me this long to get back to this. Enjoyed the Private View and catching up with Tim Lambert. The next morning was a groggy 4am start so I can could drive back home in the rain so I could go to a 2000AD convention in Bristol, I know. Then on the Bank Holiday Monday I drove back, took the paintings down and drove back to Bristol to see the Throwing Muses. I was fucked for the following week. I patted myself on the back for being able to do all the logistics of getting the work up and back, but there was zero interest in the paintings. So what was the point? I’m struggling to come up with an answer.