Once I had secured a venue for the exhibition… and my father’s participation in the project, it was time to create some new art work. Anyone who’s ever stopped painting and then started again would know that being confronted with a blank canvas and an exhibition deadline, for the first time in years, is NOT EASY. So I delayed the moment for as long as possible. I spent hours looking at my old Dancers paintings. And I spent hours looking at photos of dancers online. And I spent hours looking for good deals on artist materials, online. And I spent hours mindlessly browsing Facebook… And then, about 2 months before the actual exhibition, I was left with little choice but to admit that I was as emotionally ready as I was ever going to be, get myself together and start working on my new paintings.
If I need to be honest though, my planning for making the actual art I wanted to exhibit really sucked. Whatever (or perhaps because of) my insecurities and emotional issues, I had put it last on my already long TO DO list and in the end I just got lucky because… by that time the concept of the exhibition had grown, we had some sponsors and a well known local artist called Svetlin Nenov, who paints dancers almost exclusively, had also agreed to participate in the show. Basically, we had decided that the best approach for this show was to promote it as my father’s exhibition, with the Grand Prix statuette central to the event, and Svetlin and me as supporting artists. I had never met Svetlin but having him exhibit with me took a lot of the pressure off.
I decided that realistically I could make 8 new paintings and exhibit 12 altogether, including the 4 old ones I already had. If Svetlin exhibited another 12 works, I figured, that would pretty much be enough to cover the walls of the gallery.
Luckily, I’ve always worked well under pressure and painting through the night (much to Michael’s displeasure) is my thing, so in the end I somehow pulled it all through. Admittedly, the first 2 paintings I made were not my best. I painted and repainted them, changed the compositions and colours over and over again. In the end I decided they were good enough to be exhibited… the next 2 worked out much better… By the time I started working on the final 4, I was starting to really enjoy myself. I had my process and ideas streamlined, I smiled at my blank canvases and played with the colours and textures. I finished the last painting (yeah, that’s me in front of it on the photo) about a week before my flight to Bulgaria, giving it just enough time to more or less dry before having to be shipped.
