September 6, 2022: Insomnia -

"Insomnia" is the name of the coffee shop where my paintings are hanging for the month of September, and I think it's a great name for a coffee shop. 

It also neatly describes how I felt, in the two days before the show went up, when I was racing around trying to get everything prepared, and to remember what I'd forgotten. Prices? Labels? Contract? Artist Statement? (A "woeful genre," as Peter Schjeldahl writes in the New Yorker.) Cards? Stickum? Tape? Levels? 

If I hadn't spent an extra week in England, isolating with COVID, I would have had nine days to prepare, and I'd pretty much left a bunch of tasks for that stretch of time. But then in the event, it was two days. Yikes.

The night before I drove out there, I wrapped all the painting in brown paper, and numbered them, and put them in totes (except the really big ones, which were just stacked together) and ... one was missing. A big one. Too big to be hiding anywhere, and yet I still searched under the couch, and drove down to the studio, and stared at the back seat of the Mazda. No painting. It was going to be a focal point....

The big one:

So after the appropriate worry and insomnia, I decided it was probably still at the frame shop, and I would NOT be hanging the show at 7 am as planned, but would have to wait until the frame shop opened, etc.  It was true! They still had it! Everything got done, eventually. Phew.

A few paintings have already found homes! I'm so pleased: