Sale

As the afternoon glowered down on me, my paint colors got brighter and brighter. Payne's grey gave way to cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson.... The darker it gets outside, the more challenging painting becomes, everything shifting with the light, losing intensity, going dormant.

Our annual studio sale is this Sunday and the next, and Melinda and I have been cranking out the work at a manic pace. Post-Thanksgiving reorders are trickling in -- yay! Job security. But the big push is getting all our seconds in sell-able shape -- it's the big draw for this sale. So it's been out to the sheds in the cold, digging back into the webbed corners and lowest shelves to extract boxes and boxes stashed all this past year.

It's a little like reliving the past twelve months -- an evolution becomes visible in the painting style, the color choices. As Melinda comes out with a new line each year, there's always a handful of the early versions of whatever it is that's currently in demand. I have just a moment to feel wistful, then it's on to the next thing.

I'm rather bleary and just a bit dizzy from this pace. There's not a lot of breathing space in a small business like this, especially in these unpredictable times. If all goes well at the studio sale, there's a chance that M. will take her work to the NY Gift Show in January -- a new venue, potentially new clients. Keeping fingers crossed. We're ready to grow into the next phase.