Taking the paintings off the stretchers and rolling them up. The Milchhof really came into its own with friendliness and helpfulness. First, big handsome burly bearded Mark asked the driver of the van going to the Köln Art fair, also Mark and a sculptor, if he could take my stuff to the shippers, as well as giving me good practical advice. Mark, second, said he would get all the stuff into the van and then possibly he could take the rolls on the roof. Meanwhile Volka, kind Volka, offered to drive all my stuff to the shippers for me. Fantastic. We got the stuff together and set off at four o’clock. Each painting in a plastic drainpipe weighed 4.55 Kg, just as George Pusenkoff had predicted. The four small paintings in a package weighed 6.4 Kg, and the incredibly heavy suitcase that I could not lift weighed 35.33 Kg. So it all went well because of great fellow feeling support and help those artists gave me. That definitely is Berlin.
Another pleasure was visiting Lisabetta’s studio and seeing her delicate soft works. Very lovely and wonderful for me, as Lisabetta is also a colourist working through intuition, and not from a closed, imposed system. We had a lot to discuss about the materials, technique, and general approaches to our art.
Cathy the artist in the studio above me came to tell me about some private views opening tonight, and Carlos, the architect and artist and I had a discussion about our work as he had visited my website. All in all just the sort of rewarding inter-relation with other artists that one longs for and normally doesn’t often happen. It was a terrific feeling.Late in the warm evening we stopped for an ice cream outside on Orderbergerstrasse and were astounded by the number of people, (and bicycles parked), in the Biergarten next door. Exactly like a Renoir painting of the masses at leisure, or a Pleasure garden this Biergarten was closed up, invisible, until a week ago. How magical it all is.
