Bite Size Opinions and Facts From the Studio.

Here we go then. Here are some facts and opinions.

• Fact - My cup of tea is at a perfect temperature and consistancy. This is good, it is how one starts one's day. The consumption of tea is a reflection of how one is going to cope with the day ahead. It is an arbiter of one's mental attitude. Perhaps even of mental health. Therefore on this important day my mental health and attitude is excellent.
• Fact - Today I go to London to discuss my latest commission. I can't say too much about it because it is a secret, and will be publically presented at the end of this month. It is being commissioned by someone for the presentation, and I will have to make contact with and involve the victim's family. Who I don't know and don't know if they know what I do or even if they will approve. It will involve four portraits, church architecture and a stained glass window. How I will do this in time I don't know. But I said yes, so I will have to.
• Fact - All the information for the above commission will have to be collected from London. I live in Bognor Regis.
• Fact - the Jesus on the Tube I am doing now is also a secret. Note how none of you know who I am doing it for. Ha. Clever, that.
• Opinion - For a long time the scientists were looking to birds for flu, and while the scientists were looking high into the sky for bird flu, the pigs just sauntered in with theirs. Our medical men will have to look down now instead of up.
• Opinion - We have a pandemic affecting 27 people.
• Question - Are pigs going to become as vilified as black cats in the middle ages?
• Fact - I am going to Lucy's for dinner after my meeting. That will be a lovely end to a quite hard day.

Right. Finished my tea. Time to research my new commission before I even get to the meeting. Got to be well prepared. Here is another fact - my painting is not just sitting down and creating a picture. I do much research into who I am painting, which is easy if they know I am painting them. If they don't know then I have to research online, and with the help of their family. I gather together all the images and facts and items to go into the painting, which will include the setting. Remember the Ross Family Portrait, I had to paint the house and create a pergola and cover it in flowers. To do that I needed detailed photographs of the house, the way the doors opened, the brick work, the architecture, the bricks. Then I needed to find a pergola that would fit in the back patio and understand how it was made before painting it. And then I had to find out how plants grew on pergolas, and how it all worked. So today, I will have to arrange to interview some of the family while the Main Man in the picture is not there, and have whispered furtive meetings in the cupboard under the stairs in case he comes in and finds me there with my camera and notebook and enquiring expression on my face. Once I went to meet a new client and her lots of children who wanted a painting for her husband for his birthday surprise. And as I was sitting at the table at teatime, he came in unexpectedly and all as one, kids and wife and I, had the same idea and I became a long lost friend and stayed for dinner laughing and chatting like we all knew each other. And lovely man, he didn't once question that as a long lost friend none of his five children or wife had ever mentioned me before that day, nor did I quite know the childrens' names. And we were unable to be specific about quite how and where we had met, all those years ago, to make me this long lost special friend. Who had a camera and notebook and lists of his likes and dislikes in the notebook. All was revealed when he was given the painting, and since then we all have become firm friends. Ha. The life of an artist is full of subterfuge.