First sale of a picture I made

Starting last week I’ve been making different series of watercolours this time adding collage with advertising slogans on top of colour fiends. I do washes with different brands of watercolours then let the sheets dry before sticking cutout letters and shapes onto the paper. In fact I started on this jag on 26 Jan because a houseguest was watching YouTube in Chinese without subtitles available, it was the excuse I needed to make something instead of consuming something else, I made sets of four pictures starting with the theme of cars, graduating to apparel (clothes, glasses) and finally doing some about real estate.

Though it’s not immediately apparent what these pictures are “about”.

Yesterday I was talking with Simon who I started the Eastern Suburbs Art Group with (back in July), we were travelling on the train to Kings Cross on the way to the galleries in Rushcutters Bay. We talked about consumer culture and he focused on a type of combat sport that is very popular in some sectors, probably he knows I don’t watch sport so was ribbing me. He said there is a UFC fight on soon in Perth between two major figures and we laughed a lot, I guess he wanted to discuss spectacle and the ways we look for entertainment.

We met up with Sophie and Anthony at Arthouse Gallery, two years before I’d bought paintings by James Ettelson at the same location. This time he was showing spectacular large colourful works and smaller limited run prints. I told my friends about what had happened two years earlier, I was apparently in “on the ground floor” whatever that means, I only buy things I like and I don’t sell them for profit if the value escalates.

In a little while we walked down toward the railway viaduct to go to another gallery where I got tired and sat down to wait on a park bench made of stone. Some people brought dogs along to poop while I was waiting and then Sophie came out with two men in tow and introduced us, I said hello and the six of us walked to Victoria Street in Darlinghurst where Daniel and Gavin had left their bags in their office. Anthony and I sat down on a street bench while Simon stood on the pavement and the three of us talked, then the other three came out of a gallery and I showed Sophie paintings of mine I had brought in my knapsack. 

A miracle happened when Daniel whipped a $50 note out of his pocket and said he wanted an orange one, I think “orange” had cropped up in one discussion or another I wasn’t following closely, so I took the pen he had with him and using a restaurant table I signed the back of the paper. This is the purchase, ‘Apparel VI’.

When I got home I labelled the rest of the series and told Daniel via SMS the title of the work he’d bought. It was a memorable night as you can imagine as I lost count of the number of people I told about the evening’s events. I shall write more at the end of the year in my annual memorial.