It was a quiet Sunday morning in the gallery which was just a well after the exertions of the previous evening, but it gave me chance to look over the paintings that had sold to ensure they were ready to hang on the walls of their new owners. I had brought half a framing kit with me and with a few purchases from the ironmongers over the road had assembled the rest, so I whiled away the early hours sticking things I still don’t know the names of on the back of the frames to make them fully secure for posting. I shuffled the walls a little to move the sold paintings into the less prominent positions, thereby giving the unsold paintings a better chance. There was no market and nothing much happened until the rest of the shops opened around 11.00am.

The new term for the schools had coincided with the start of the exhibition so there had been very few children in the gallery so far but today was the day they needed to be entertained so they arrived in abundance. Children’s attitude to paintings never ceases to amaze me, they are forthright in their opinions and criticality, and are not afraid to voice their opinions. I come from a large family and am therefore quite child friendly, enjoying speaking to and respecting the small people, “Hey mister that one is really cool” was quite humbling, especially as they were talking about the abstract pieces without requiring any explanation whatsoever.

It was particularly enlightening to be able to talk to children about my work that is full of adult angst and construct thinking but forget all that, to rely on only colours and shapes as if they are quite an ordinary thing is a childish way of looking. Perhaps Picasso had it right, if you paint like a child, your paintings will be most appreciated by children, but the amount of learning and experimentation that goes into that simplification is tremendous.

Also apparent was the reticence of people to actually enter a gallery, some were difficult to entice through the door. They would photograph the QR codes so that they could explore the exhibition in the comfort of their own phones. However, as Benjamin would have it (Benjamin, 1936), there is no substitute for the aura of an actual work of art, it would seem though, that in the digital age, it suffices to view the works on a backlit screen at 50 x 70mm.

Bibliography

Benjamin, W. (1936) The work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin Books.