How do you expect me to work under these conditions!

Big sigh. I'm getting there. Clearing out the studio, that is. Dad bought me a big floor-standing easel, because the canvas for the self portrait I'm working on is too big for the table easel and my upright one, which he half-inched from school 25 years a ago for me, holds the canvas too high for me to reach it. I wonder if Toulouse Lautrec had to stand on a box to paint? And he was 2 inches taller than me in his stocking feet. Probably in his fishnet stocking feet, if the stories are true, but I digress. So I need to clear floor space for the new easel, which is still in it's box because there's no room to assemble it (I knew that 'mantle' wasn't the opposite of 'dismantle, and it took me a moment to remember what was). Luckily, some of the tables I'm currently dumping stuff on have screw-off legs, so they'll be coming down. I was desperate for storage space, so shelves have been put up in odd, and now inconvenient, places but I can work around those. It would just be nice to have nothing above waist level, so that my line of sight reaches all four walls, giving the appearance of space. I also need some wall space to hang my completed work and other images that stimulate me. However, the walls were built with industrial brick which is a bugger to drill into. The wall is too uneven to blue-tac stuff too, and it's brick painted with emulsion, so blue-tac slides off it eventually anyway.


Also, the idea for this self portrait is to depict both me and my studio, so I want to position myself so that the background is interesting, not just a chaotic mess of irrelevant stuff. At the moment it's filled with pink plastic boxed of mega blocs, camping equipment, the broken windsurfing gear our neighbour upstairs left behind, and other funny stuff. Actually, that makes it sound quite interesting. BUT, there isn't room to swing a cat, or a feather boa (sorry Toulouse, I couldn't resist. Given me ideas for another self portrait, but, again, I digress).


Last week clearing out I dropped off 10 bags and boxes at a nearby charity shop, and there's another three in my boot from yesterday ready to donate. I can now see the light from the tiny window in the corner, but there's still just too much stuff in there. I mustn't grumble, at least I have a space of my own to work in.