PAINTINGS, PRINTS AND PERISHING!

It's cuck-cuck-cold here in Shetland today. A cold northerly breeze is blowing round the cletts and wicks, and my joints are stiff and sore. This is a sad admission for a so-called hardy northerner, but my days of getting out to enjoy a bracing walk "aboot da banks" in such conditions seem to be tragically over. I fully intend to confine myself to the warmth of my living-room, and address myself to the knotty problem of extracting something interesting to tell you from my activities during the last seven days.

Let's start with the artwork, which should be easy, as I seem to have achieved very little in that direction. I've begun work on what will almost certainly be the last commission of 2009, a painting of the Buckie seine-netter "Chrysolite" which, as a child, I remember calling occasionally at Lerwick during her fishing operations of the late 1950s and early 1960s. To "normal" people, one fishing boat is very much like another, but, to an enthusiast like me, each forms its own distinguishable presence from a long distance away. I've also been working a little on my "stock" tall ships pictures, although I have little progress to report on these. I'm still struggling a bit with stretched canvas as a painting surface, and I miss the days of a readily-available supply of hardboard, and getting it cut on the "big saw" at Hay & Co's DIY store at Freefield. The surface of this material was smoother, and lent itself well to the "dry" application of thin layers of paint which I favour in my skies and seas.

My friend Mark Fuller, of Tay-CAD Ltd, has timeously produced the batch of giclee fine art prints I ordered at the start of the month. I collected (and paid a not inconsiderable amount of money for) them on Tuesday afternoon, and spent the evening numbering, logging, bagging and labelling these. I now have my "stock" ready for the vast numbers of Christmas shoppers who will be thronging round my stall at the Toll Clock Shopping Centre over the next three Thursdays (I hope!).

My copy of the RYA magazine landed on my doormat at some point during Friday. It carries my advert in its Classified section, and it is definitely visible, although to how many and with what result remains to be seen. Yesterday's edition of the Aberdeen-based Press & Journal also had my advert running along the bottom of one of its pages, but it had no discernable effect on the numbers of people who visited my website during the day. In previous years, the increase in visitor numbers due to the Saturday "big ad" was quite marked, although any effect on sales was more difficult to ascertain.

On Wednesday, I ordered another batch of my promotional leaflets from Shetland Litho. The first thousand seemed to disappear fairly fast, roughly half of them going to destinations outwith these islands. As with the magazine and newspaper ads, results are hard to quantify, and any attempt at analysis is futile. I have to let people know what I do, and hope that there are people out there who like it enough to want it on their walls!

The battle with Parcelforce, over my claim for non-delivery of the painting I sent to France, continues. The first claim was lost in the post (sic!), and, after a phone consultation with one of their representatives, I faxed a copy of the second completed form to them, together with a covering explanatory letter, and copies of the related email correspondence over the period. As I have written before in this journal, I await developments. I know there will be a positive outcome, as I am not going to accept anything else. I am a determined little cuss, I have the full force of my compulsive/obsessive nature trained on this issue, and I won't relent until I have my £49.99 postage and insurance refunded!

My website http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/ appears to be undergoing a substantial update as I write this. I hope it doesn't take too long, as the run-up to Christmas is a bad time to lose one's online presence. I hope that, on or offline, your presence is felt positively by all those around you, and that you have a pleasant and successful week.