'Do you like it?' she asked her companion.
'It's not for me', they replied.
'Do you like it?' I asked,
'Yes,' she said.
I remembered the co-exhibitor at the fair who had muttered grimly, shaking her head, 'Yellow is very hard to sell. People don't like yellow'.
If you've read the past few blog posts, you'll have been following the birth and process of the 'yellow painting'. (In retrospect, I've spotted that it's a part of a series which had begun with a black ink painting on white paper, and will continue through more colours. So it's now no longer 'the yellow painting' but 'Bones and Bonfires: Yellow'. Sometimes processes are only clear when you look backwards. But I digress). I remembered how once I had smoothed around the edges of the canvas with my fingers, and stood back one last time to listen to any changes that needed to be made, I had reached for the gloss varnish and sealed the deal.
I then took her (yes, although yellow is a pretty yang colour, this painting is definitely female) down to Sam the framer, for him to do his magic, and two weeks later I hobbled back, having injured myself in the gym while leaning down to pick up the bar (yes I know, embarassing). Sam kindly explained to me, a thorough novice at competent packaging, how to pack 'the yellow one' and 'lotus moves' together in a way that was feasible to carry, not that anything was particularly feasible to carry, and gave me a huge piece of cardboard enough to wrap a house.
My daughter helped me down the road with it asking me in pointed tones why I always had to do things in a difficult way. Couldn't I have taken something smaller? that fits in a portfolio case? Once I got home, cranked the music up and set about the cardboard with a breadknife (yes, I know), and unrolled a mile of biodegradable bubble wrap and lavishly pulled out reams of FRAGILE tape (that sound!) I had known the process was underway. We were going to London, my paintings, all wrapped up like a baby clutched to my chest (knees to chin in fact), my spine, and me.
And now, it was Sunday afternoon, the fair was about to close, my booth neighbours and I were starting to get antsy - nobody wanted to carry all their artworks home again. There had been plenty of footfall, particularly as we were located right next to the bar, and there was a lot of interest, particularly in my immediate neighbour's paintings of London, with sunlight and cherry blossom, and a smaller number of people struck and intrigued by my paintings, everyone seeing different things in them, but nobody had decided to take one home, until this last visitor arrived, with just the right space on her dining room wall.
This was obviously the outcome I'd been aiming for, but the moment of exchange, at the packing station, still felt like a shock. Handing this painting that was somehow the size of a small person, that was somehow a part of my soul although really it had just come through me and had its own life - like a child - it was one of those moments when time works a little differently. Was it slow motion, or was it fast? Why had I not thought to sign the painting before? She was now the one who was worrying about keeping it safe on the journey home.
I walked back to the booth, buzzing with happiness, fulfilment and a sense of completion, but my arms were strangely empty.
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