interior desecrating

Twelve days ago, when I got home from Victoria, I had that 'summer holidays' feeling. The flurry of work was done and I could take a break before getting back down to it. But I'd let everything else slide for so long that before I knew it I was having the car that hadn't seen the inside of a garage for eight months serviced, attempting to brush the long-neglected dogs but finally resorting to just cutting out the mats and, worst of all, dusting (which I truly hate) ... to just skim the surface.

This flurry of domestic activity awakened my usually deeply-buried (if not downright catatonic)interior decorator. Most people assume that artists, by the mere fact that they create 'wall decorations', have a knack for and interest in this kind of thing. Some do, but some really don't. It's like crafts; when I was a teacher many of my colleagues automatically confused 'art' with 'craft' and assumed I could educate them on whatever project they wanted to do with their students, but I couldn't knit one purl two if someone poked me in the eye with a sharp knitting needle. Fortunately I have a lot of factors on my side: (a) I can put paintings on the walls (and paint them, too), (b) thanks to a mother with impeccable taste who seems to be constantly downsizing I get the world's best hand-me-downs, (c) I'm a neat freak who detests clutter, (d) practically everyone I know has more money than we do and gives us beautiful presents because we never buy that sort of thing ourselves, and (e) there's an Ikea 15 minutes down the road.

To make a long story slightly less long, I tackled the dining room yesterday. There was no longer enough duct tape in the world to salvage the sad cushions on the dining room chairs (which, along with the table, are still in excellent condition in spite of their age because my mother only discards the best), so off to Ikea I went and got new seat cushions. Before I knew it I was whipping the tired tablecloth off and polishing the glass, replacing the bowl in the centre with a beautiful glass one given as a present several years ago and putting fresh candles in the cheap, nasty Ikea candelabra. But there was still something missing. D'oh! Art, of course!

This part was surprisingly tough. As much as I shout and wave my arms about philistines who buy art to match the sofa, when push comes to shove, colour and format do matter to some degree (wow ~ I can't believe that the painting gods didn't just smite me for that one) and only one painting fit the bill. It's huge, 4' x 5', and dominates the area so much that it's more than a little overwhelming. Not only that, I'm not sure if bird skeletons and a million dirty little bird footprints will stimulate the appetites of guests, assuming we have guests. But for those two reasons alone I realised that the chances of me actually selling this painting are pretty darned slim. Besides, the colours work and the horizontal format is perfect.

Yeah, I know: time to abandon my domestic projects and get back to work! It was fun for the 10 minutes it lasted but I've recovered.