(Bourgogne and a Glass of Wine. unfinished state. 10″ x 18″)

I began this painting of a bottle of Bourgogne and a glass of wine in May of 2014. I showed it at Lucy Bell’s Gallery in 2014 but later I cut it down to 10” by 16” and reworked it for my exhibition in the Crown last year but I was never happy with it, the spaces around and especially below the objects were too mean.

Last week I took it out of it’s frame. I was going to strip the canvas off the stretcher and throw the painting away but I wondered if there was enough canvas too put onto a slightly larger stretcher.

There was, just. It’s still skinny but I managed to find another two inches on the height. Who says that size isn’t important? I still have the shelf and the bottle and the glass so I’m going to give the painting one more chance.

When I started writing this blog and posting on Facebook about about a year ago I wanted to demystify painting and to describe what I do as a job.

I used to think that it was Michelangelo who said ‘Artists are the fitting consorts for princes and kings’. I suspect that it was someone around then, perhaps Vasari, but neither Google nor I can find the quotation. That idea did a lot of damage; until then artists were like masons and carpenters, they were craftsmen now art is now shrouded in mystery and artists pose behind the idea of genius.