Up at 7am today, after an anxious and sleepless night of the usual stomach pain, to deliver a batch of paintings in the rain to Macclesfield, through heavy traffic to get there by 10am. The Cheshire Art Fair opens to the public on Thursday at the Town Hall. This is my biggest exhibition of the year and I'll have 12 works on show, including the spectacularly framed print number 11 of the Richard Dadd painting.
It's in a large white frame, about 80cm square, and is the only print framed in this way.
When I got back I added the Burning Circus illustrations to my book. I need to finalise the cover next and work on a few details. I've managed to put the book together at an amazing pace, and will need to do a lot of final proofing and checking. I've entered one of its poems into the National Poetry Competition. The odds of getting anywhere in that, no matter how outstanding my poem is, are minuscule, but it does mean that I can't publish my book until the results are out, just in case the fates and muses smile upon me. I can wait.
Here is the cover so far:
I've also started to add to the Marius Fate online presence and created an Apple Artist's Image. I saw that last week, Gunstorm had over 7000 plays on Spotify. Perhaps I can put this down to Tor's vocals and Stuart Ashens' video, and perhaps the new Mark Sheeky Music YouTube Channel has given my music a boost, but this is a pleasant sign, that after over 10 years, the song becomes popular (or gets a second wind, technically, it was also popular first time round). Anyway, I'm pleased that I've kept busy and kept working on music since then. I must keep trying to aim high in my wilderness.
My main plans are to finish this poetry book, and the order some Marius CDs in preparation for the album launch. I'm not very happy with the quality of the ink-jet printed replicated CDs but for any run under 1000 it seems to be the only option. I wondered about getting some sort of laser-etch machine to make my own designs but perhaps this is overkill.
