Nesting instinct (cupcakes and swallows)

Ah… two confessions to make. With the best will in the world, I had intended to document every stage of at least one painting, in this case the 5’x5′ oil on canvas titled The Secret. All was going quite well, I would photograph the painting before I started work on it for the day and then again when I had finished each afternoon. I think I got to about fifteen days of documentation before my laptop crashed, taking at least five days of photographs with it.

The computer technician who examined the unhappy laptop shook the hard drive, frowned, and explained that ‘it shouldn’t sound like a baby’s rattle.’ Like many stupid, stupid people the world over, I had failed to back up a lot of my data, including the most recent records of the painting, and am in the process of trying to piece together a whole heap of data such as tax records et al, can’t tell you how much fun this is. Let this be a lesson to you, because it certainly wasn’t for me: something nearly identical happened about five years ago.

My best estimate is that The Secret eventually took about a month to complete. It was exhibited at Watt Space as part of the Animal in Us group exhibition, an event that ran alongside the University of Newcastle’s Minding Animals conference, though I went on to make quite a number of changes to it after the show.