An Exhibition and Mdm Du Bois

 We completed building a new cover for the coal that supplied the stove, the heart’s blood of the house. We cleared areas of dense undergrowth and trees. A mixture of elder, ash and brambles, plus in the middle of this jungle were growing a whole host of hellebores! They were beautiful and it felt like they were flowering just for us and to help us out of our feelings of loss and the trauma of the fire.

Old man’s beard twined its way up the trunks and did its best to trip us up, refusing to be cut easily. I love it’s seed heads (rather like dandelion’s) falling in profusion over the trees like snowflakes.      

The hard physical work acted on my slow and sluggish brain which had to climb out of its intense self absorption and conflicts. I felt my heart lift and a huge weight suddenly fell away.

Soon there was the smell of wood smoke, the bird song, woodpecker and pheasant. The sight of vivid green on the larches that all congregated in my senses. I lost myself and began to breathe fresh air again.

Despite the deer and the rabbits we continued growing runner beans, tomatoes, artichokes and more. The season was now turning to autumn with moist dampness and gales. The larches on the hill were now turning to rust. Apples on the old trees were turning red and starting to drop and so we gathered together some tomato trays and I clambered up the branches to rescue the good ones. I dropped them down to Mike and he wrapped them in newspaper. We then took them back up to the house to store in the attic rooms upstairs for the winter. I loved this age old process and the cyclical turning of the seasons. It was something that I had not experienced while living in London and it certainly had a grounding affect on me.

We also collected the glass cloches, washed them and stored them next to the glasshouse ready for the new season in a new year.

Then came the digging of the soil to prepare for planting and like before I really enjoyed the rhythm and the earthy, herby smell of the soil. The woodpeckers drilling echoed over the valley along with squabbling rooks and sparrows. I could feel the dying of the season with the pungent whiff of bonfires and blue smoke.

Mike and Denis were preparing for an exhibition at the Guildford House Gallery and they suggested I put some paintings in as well. So with some trepidation I agreed, this would be my first exhibition and it was somewhat daunting, I had only previously put work up at College.

I can’t remember now how much time exactly there was, but I had a very short deadline to get things mounted and framed ready for display. With very little money I decided to frame them all myself. Little did I know what a task this would turn out to be?

I bought the wood moulding from a local wood yard, cleared my father’s bench in the garage and set to work. Firstly,  I found I kept cutting the 45 degree angles the wrong way, I cut out mounts with a stanley knife and cut my finger. Not an expert at sawing  I made rather wonky angles that then didn’t glue properly together. Cleaning glass was also a nightmare. I rigorously cleaned and polished the glass with vinegar and water, buffing them with newspaper. Blew all the dust off and put the frame together with the wonky angles. When all was nicely sealed and fixed in the frame I turned the frame over, only to find a great black piece of dust right in the middle of the glass! Or a big smudge of grease from my fingers that invariably was on the inside. I had to then take the frame apart and start all over again. This took endless time and I was seething with frustration and worn to a frazzle. Never again I thought to myself.

The closer the deadline became the more mistakes I made. I had a dozen more frames to make so had to “burn the midnight oil” and get up at the break of dawn, which at that time was pretty unheard of and was a bit of a surprise to my parents as well! With constant reframing and reglazing I finally managed to complete the full number of paintings  just in the nick of time to my great relief, but at a cost of a loss of confidence and total exhaustion. It might have quite easily put me off painting for good, but not quite.

I wasn’t in the best of moods when we loaded the car and drove over to the gallery. I remember it being thick mist as we headed inauspiciously slowly over to Guildford to put up the work, which again was another battle to be wrestled with. I think, you could say that I had bitten off more than I could chew and I should have reduced the number of works in the show.

From my point of view the exhibition wasn’t a great success, some of the paintings weren’t my best. I was also up against a much more seasoned professional painter, Gordon Randell, who certainly eclipsed my efforts. So, while it didn’t go that well, I did learn a few lessons from the experience. For example, only put up work that is finished and you are happy with, as a few duds in an exhibition can pull the whole show down and reflects badly on the good work. I also discovered that some works can look good at home when first completed, but look completely different when hanging in a gallery, especially when hung with other artists’ work.

The pottery on show though, was more of a success with many pieces sold and many contacts made. I met a number of Mike and Denis’s friends and was reintroduced to Nicolas Rocke the tall imposing figure that had driven me home that summer, several years before.  His imposing frame still seemed to scare me, but he bought a dozen or so pottery items and very kindly bought one of my pictures too!