Five Things I Learned Doing A Solo Exhibition…

(in no particular order… because by the final week my brain had largely dissolved into lists, frame corners, and coffee.)

There is something quietly magical - as well as hugely stressful - about preparing for a solo exhibition.

You spend months — sometimes years — gathering ideas, experimenting, discarding, beginning again, chasing colours that refuse to behave, and trying to coax something meaningful onto the surface of paper or board. Something that you actually like…

And then, suddenly, time has run out and the work has to leave the studio.

Not just the paintings themselves, but the whole invisible ecosystem surrounding them: framing, photographing, naming, pricing, writing, promoting, hanging, packaging, labels… and approximately seven hundred tiny decisions nobody really tells you about beforehand.

Having recently navigated this particular combination of excitement, gratitude, mild panic, and logistical spreadsheetery, I thought I'd share a few things I learned along the way.

Not necessarily in order of importance.

More in order of what floated back to the surface once the dust — and bubble wrap — settled.