The Great Sort

The studio living room has officially been taken over. Paintings everywhere — stacked on the couch, leaning against the fireplace, tucked into boxes and baskets, wrapped in plastic. The bear catching salmon, the bighorn sheep, the bison — they will all come down from their spots on the wall and join the chaos.

 

This is the part nobody talks about: the unglamorous, time-consuming work that happens before a painting ever reaches a gallery wall. Every piece gets checked for condition, labeled on the back with title, medium, dimensions, and price. Inventory lists get updated. Hanging hardware gets checked. Things get wrapped and re-wrapped so they survive the journey without a scratch.

 

It's actually a surprisingly emotional process. You spend hours — sometimes weeks — with these animals. You learn every shadow in a bear's fur, the exact curve of a ram's horn, the way light catches a cat's eye. They live on your walls and you see them every morning over coffee.
And then, if you've done your job right, someone falls in love with one and takes it home forever.

That's the goal, of course. That's the whole point. But there's still that quiet little pang when a painting sells — a moment of oh. You're gone now. You hope it's going somewhere it'll be truly seen and loved, not just hung to fill a space.

 

For now though — back to the labeling. There's a lot of work between here and opening night.