‘WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING, IT’S NOT AS IMPORTANT AS STROKING THE CAT’..,

.., an old Polish proverb which clearly must apply to what the suppliers have been up to over the last couple of months or so instead of getting my canvases done.

Last Thursday’s desperate enquiry on my part was the last straw when it ended in yet more excuses and another proposed week’s delay leaving me with knout, or very little, to be getting on with for more time than I could bear or afford - the excuse this time being that ‘the machine’ used to stretch the bloody things wasn’t.., as an abbreviation of a more recent Polish proverb goes: “.., broken, but.., uh.., modular”...

Inexpensive, ‘ready-mades’ might be, but the whole experience has left me wishing it were less expensive to knock up the buggers myself in the future, but it’s quite simply not, and it’s virtually impossible to get hold of reasonably priced linen or cotton for less cash than the finished product eventually costs – strange - but true...

So anyway, finally, what I should have done weeks ago, and a 400 Kilometre round trip to pick up two '120 X 100 Windsor and Newtons' from Warsaw was the outcome last Saturday. Not as expensive as it may sound either, and to have the brilliant white things set up in the ‘studio’ right now is already getting the juices flowing again.

And although the juices are unfortunately flowing in other ways too, as I have a voraciously stinking cold making merely shuffling around painful when in Warsaw, it was also great to spend a day back in the capital again. The trip gave me a chance to check out one of the galleries I want to eventually approach (the other was unfortunately but unsurprisingly closed), and what I found at Gallery Program gladly lifted the heart. Good stuff to be found in Warsaw is without doubt possible, but has proved hard to find, and the discovery of this place and hopefully local_30 in the future helps greatly with any forthcoming prospects.

Okay then, with work to be getting on with at last, for now, do zobaczenia, and, as I begin to attack these virgin canvases, I’ll leave you with just one more Polish maxim: “It's better to copulate than never” – Wise words indeed.