this is how it feels...

Next weekend, Saturday 25th - Monday 27th May, will be the Spring Fling open studio event across Dumfries and Galloway, SW Scotland, when artists and makers welcome visitors into their studios from all across the UK and indeed the world. This is an exciting time. I stopped making work about a week ago, which is quite extraordinary for me. My inner voice commands “More, more, more!” But with only a few days left now, all thoughts turn necessarily to a chaotic "getting the studio ready". All the obvious tasks are involved here: sweeping a floor that doesn’t want to give up its accumulated detritus, tidying waxy paint encrusted work benches, patching and painting bits of the walls where too many nails and bluetack have made their indelible marks. Paintings have to be edge painted and strung for hanging, even before I can decide where to hang them for optimum effect. Then there are arcane considerations of how to make the studio look suitably “working artist’s studi...

Last weekend was the mighty open studio extravaganza in this corner of Scotland which is Spring Fling . Ninety-three artists and makers across our region opened their studio doors to welcome in the interested and curious public. There was an enormous amount of preparation to get my studio and all the work ready and a level of exciting adrenalin-fuelled panic that far surpassed rational sanity. The doors opened while the final signage was still being tied into place on Saturday morning at 10.30am and the fun began. Even though I have taken part in several Spring Flings by now, I was still surprised when nigh on nine hundred visitors came to my studio over three days. They smiled, looked bemused, chatted, asked very pertinent and informed questions, and explained how my painting based on feelings of loss of self, resembled a dolphin cavorting in the waves. Some managed to control the urge to reach out and touch textured surfaces and some did not even try, caressing the surprisi...