I had a spate of art-buying nine or ten years ago - glassware, china, sculpture, as well as paintings - but it all ground to a halt as the realities of running two houses on one pension gradually forced me to cut down on inessential embellishments to my home.
Even after Ouse Cottage was finally off my hands from August 2011 - and what a relief that was! - I had to keep up an ever-more-careful spending regime, made extra-necessary from late 2015 by having to repay loans to fix the car and, more lately, the caravan.
Let's face it, art is a luxury. It's nice to have, but when you need to save up, or just make ends meet, it's something that you have to forego. But paintings in particular are very useful to cover the shabbiness of a tired interior decor, and recently I've felt more ready to buy again.
But I can't afford the prices I used to pay. Once upon a time, I'd happily pay £500 for a painting. That would be for an attractive picture by a regionally-known artist. I'm not able to spend nearly so much now, and probably never will be, as saving-up for my next car is currently the major priority, and after that a general upgrading of my home - not just redecoration, but solar panels, an electric car-charging point, and the rest.
Still, a painting or two at the right price might be considered meanwhile.
And I was in Petworth the other day, a place well-known for its galleries and antique shops. I was looking for a hare. That is, a figurine, which would fill a gap. Next to my front door is a little window, and for many years after 2009 I placed a hare in that window. It was one of two that I'd bought at a Wildlife Artists' exhibition at Marwell House in Hampshire. Here they are, back in 2009, just after collection:
I'm talking about the larger one on the right, which ended up, as I say, in that window:
At night, from outside, you'd see this hare in silhouette, and the ears always caught the eye. The hare was a distinctive feature of my home, day or night. Jackie next door loved it, and eventually, in 2017, I gave that hare to her as a special 60th birthday present.
But that left a gap that would have to be filled. So this year, for my own 67th birthday, I was going to buy another hare. As it happened, I had already seen exactly the right thing last Autumn at the Francis Isles Gallery in Rochester. It would be too much to expect that they'd still have the very same hare on display after several months, but I thought it worth driving over to Kent to find out in person. That was three days ago.
Well, of course, the hare I'd seen had gone. But the artist who had made it, Suzie Marsh, had other things on display, and while there I saw that she had a website, and that her work was in fact stocked by galleries all over the country. The hare I wanted could be ordered online, or obtained through any of those galleries. It cost £110, but the girls in my local friend circle were going to pay almost half of that between them as my birthday present. And if I collected the hare from the gallery when it came in, then I would save the delivery cost.
The nearest alternative stockist was in Petworth, in West Sussex: the Forest Gallery. Petworth was about forty minutes' drive away (though much closer than Rochester), and there would be a measurable fuel cost to collect it, but this would certainly be less than the postage I'd pay if I ordered the hare online. Personal collection would also avoid the waste of a day if I had to stay in for a delivery to my home. Besides, it would be pleasant to have a further opportunity of wandering around Petworth, an old-world place with a famous National Trust property (full of art, naturally) - and I could have lunch somewhere in the town. In fact, I could take one or more of the friends who were going to present the hare to me, on my actual birthday, over a special meal. (It's what we do for each other)
So the very next day after my trip to Rochester, I set off in the opposite direction, this time for for Petworth, to check out the Forest Gallery.
I wasn't too surprised to find that, like the Rochester gallery, they didn't have the particular hare I wanted on display. But we could refer to online and catalogue pictures, and they could order it. And that's what happened. Hopefully it will come in by the end of the month - it has to be moulded, and then hand-finished. There will be a future post about this hare, fear not!
It's smaller than the one it will replace, but I'll have that after-dark silhouette back again. As a teaser, here's picture of the artist's three current hare offerings:
The one I've chosen is the perky, upright creature left rear. He's on his haunches with his head up and ears erect, getting ready for instant flight. The other two hares are great, but strike me as rather too cool and relaxed, especially the one in front with his paws crossed. It's nice to remember that hares have their laid-back, casual moments too, but I wanted one in an action pose. Here's another picture, from the Forest Gallery's own website:
So much for the hare that led me to Petworth. While there, I had a mooch around the other shops, and ended up at the Petworth Antiques Market, which, so far as I could judge, sold proper affordable antiques, and not merely a miscellany of attic tat and beaten-up 'collectables'. Not that you could get away with doing that in Petworth, which doesn't do flea markets. I saw several things I liked, such as vases, although the item I couldn't resist on a first sweep was this 1955 Australian novel, The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland:
The title caught my eye. There's a bed-and-breakfast establishment out on the country to the east of Salisbury at Middle Winterslow called 'Shiralee'. I remember walking by it some fifteen years back, and thinking that it looked very 'bohemian' - in a good way - but reckoned that anybody staying there might be in for an Experience!
I now know that a shiralee is in fact the term for a burden you drag along through the Australian outback, an aboriginal word probably. In the novel, the 'burden' is the little daughter of a swagman, who is at first a hindrance to him, but in time she comes to mean everything to him, and they bond. It was turned into a film in 1957, though Niland, a real-life swagman before he wrote the book, made no money from the release. He had died of heart trouble by the time the equally-successful TV mini-series was made thirty years later in 1987. Rather sad. He'd had a hard life.
What were the odds for my spotting this book (which I didn't know existed) among a hundred others on that bookcase in the Petworth Antiques Market? Something was at work to make me notice it. A nudge from the gods perhaps.
I've started to read it, and I think it will grip me. It may make me cry. Maybe it will even help me understand and mend my own childhood, which lost its way very early on. I need to reconstruct it somehow, and I might as well make a start now. It's got to done sooner or later, even if it hurts.
Anyway, in my circuit of the premises I'd noticed an abstract painting on the wall, which wasn't exactly an antique - it looked pretty modern in style - but it certainly caught my eye. I liked the colours and the patterns. It was an abstract still life of pots and plants, and objects on a table, mostly in blue and aqua; a restful, well-balanced composition. It was nicely framed. The price? £125.
Hmm. A bit much to spend, even if obviously good art. And an acquired caution about spending too much money on things like this made me hesitate. Nevertheless, when paying for my book I asked the lady serving me about the painting, and we went to look at it. I said I really liked it, but £125 was a little too much. Could she come down a bit on the price? Yes, she could manage £110. Ah... Well, I said, what about £100? Would she let it go for that? No, she couldn't do that. Crunch time: just how much did I want it? Would I have nagging regret if I walked away? I decided that I would.
£110 it is, then, I said firmly. I paid, and while she wrapped my new painting, I fetched my car.
The painting was large and heavy enough to be unwieldy, so the chap there - her husband? - carried it out to Fiona for me, and then held back the traffic while I edged out of the yard and into the road. A wave, and I was gone until summoned back later this month by the Forest Gallery.
And no regrets as I drove home. This was an overdue upgrade for my lounge. I just knew it would look good.
Once home, and unwrapped, I still had nothing but pleasure. Yes, it would look great in my lounge, if I put it up where it got plenty of light.
Exactly who had painted it, and when? The label wasn't very informative.
But the back of the painting had the artist's name and address, and the same for the framer.
It didn't take long to establish that the artist, Sylvia Hogg, was still alive and well and living in Kent, though now in her late seventies. I reckoned the painting had been framed for an exhibition and sold there, remaining in the buyer's hands until recently. The lady at the Petworth Antiques Market had told me that she purchased it last year, and it had been on display for only a week. So how old was it?
Well, the clue was in the framer's phone number. The '01' dialling code for London numbers was abolished in May 1990. So the picture couldn't date from later than that. My money would be on 1989. Anything from earlier in the 1980s might be jazzier - hotter colours, more brazen and provocative, all suggesting excess, in keeping with the prevailing national mood of the period.
1989. So my picture was at least thirty years old. It had been well looked after. I didn't care that it was by a 'local artist'. In my experience talented local artists - sometimes sneered at for being 'weekend artists' rather than 'established professionals' - often produced work as imaginative and well-executed as anyone better-known. Pictures worth owning didn't have to be by a 'name', especially as that inevitably meant an inflated price tag. No, I liked what Sylvia Hogg had created, and I think I paid a fair price to own it. And if I hadn't rescued it from its limbo state in the Petworth Antiques Market then some other person would have bagged it, maybe as soon as that very afternoon. I'd been right not to hesitate. Well, it would have a good home now.
It didn't matter that I had to rearrange some of my paintings to give it room. It looked really good on my lounge wall.
Now I have to wait for news about the hare! I hope there is no hitch. Jo is coming with me, and we'll make a day of it.
