People gather to hear about David McEwen's Paintings, at the Galerie d'Art, Cave & Bar a Vins. Lodeve

O.K. I know, I’ve not been around of late, let me explain….

I‘ve been busy. I know that’s not a very good reason, especially for Kate. Kate built and looks after our site, she is otherwise known The Dark Lady of the Lash, in a former life she was expelled from The Spanish Inquisition for excessive cruelty, she nags! She nags constantly and has no understanding of what I,  a sensitive creative artist,  have to go through without being badgered constantly. (Kate says: I DO understand…I just don’t CARE… get on with it David!)

So to get back to what I’m supposed to be doing here. Last time I was here I was working on a watercolour of some Gendarmes marching with muskets on their shoulders. Well, while I worked on the painting I kept careful notes of the colours and methods that I used and…. well… I lost them.  It’s not my fault… all of a sudden we had painters arriving out of nowhere and I had to clean up my studio and the notes are somewhere safe… somewhere.

The picture is in an exhibition now so it wouldn’t be a good idea to write it up blind so if you’ll bear with me just for a while longer as soon as I see it again I’ll probably remember how I did the blessed thing,  hopefully,  probably.  I can’t be blamed.

So let me tell you about exhibitions instead. It’s not a good time to try and sell paintings, unless of course the painter has been dead for years and is called Picasso,  so why go through all the stress of cold calling on galleries, being rejected… sometimes not too kindly, then the terror of being accepted.  It’s a very strange type of addiction, we have to do it, we have to go through not only all the above but also the painting, re-painting and re-bloody-painting of enough pictures to be able to choose and reject sufficient for the wall, produce an invitaton list and force (by threats of physical violence) those on the list to promise to come, talk to newspapers and hope that nothing more important happens, hang the blessed things, bite nails until at least ten people arrive, make a speach and promise wife not to kill people who just eat and drink but don’t even bother to look at your children on the walls. We do it because it’s the only thing on earth that we can do….Oh, we can do other jobs, but this is the one that makes our pulse race our breathing shallow and our pockets empty.

How do I know this with such surity? Because I’ve just put up 62 paintings in a huge local gallery, that’s how. And I have to offer apologies to every one to whom I have been like a bear with a sore….well a sore something, especially Sally who has had to put up with me 24/7.

So opening night has passed and gone and I’ve sold… nothing. It’s good publicity however. It’s strange, we’ve lived here for 14 years and people used to ask Sal, “What does your husband do?”  Not any more,  so that’s nice,  eh.

So next time, I promise, I’ll tell you how I did the watercolour…….or,  you could come and see us and I’ll show you how I did it…much more fun.  Pip, pip,  see you soon.