it was a whirlwind of a week last week. The paintings had to be finished, the hanging order needed to be decided, the vinyl lettering ordered for the gallery window, the gallery walls painted, the food ordered from Open Face and everything installed.

Since my new studio is about the same size as the gallery I was able to arrange my paintings along the wall in different orders and photograph them. This helped me decide the best color balance between paintings.

The photo above is the order selected for the left wall as you walk in the gallery.

After studying this photo above I decided to switch this order shown of the “Betsy’s Sundress” painting and the “We Always Wore Proper White Gloves on Easter” painting. These would hang on the end wall you would see straight ahead as you walked into the gallery.

Finally, after repeated study of the stack of paint chips I had collected, I decided on a soft suede-brown to paint the walls behind the paintings with the light backgrounds. It was from the color swatch with the two lighter browns I had used in the “Paige Loved to Dance” triptych. I decided to keep those three paintings on a single white wall. The Behr latex paint I used actually mixes nicely with the Golden, and Windsor & Newton acrylic paints I paint with. Some of the colors I can buy in small tester jars to create a certain mood I couldn’t mix if I spent hours trying.

I checked my list as I gathered my hanging tools, paintings. labels and artist statement. With 2 days of vacation from my real job at the University and the tremendous help carrying and painting from my husband Edmund my first solo exhibit started to finally happen.

On Thursday we picked up the vinyl lettering from Dave at EGI Vinyl, painted the walls and applied the vinyl to the window.  A number of staff who walked though as I was hanging commented on how they liked the warm, inviting wall color we were painting, On Friday we brought all of the paintings to the space. Staff and students who walked through as I was hanging them said they liked the paintings. One student asked if I had postcards of the paintings for sale. I had to tell her no, but thanked her for the great idea. I’ll have to offer them for sale on my website. I spent a long time studying the paintings leaning against the gallery wall that day and adjusting the amount of equal space between them until I was satisfied they balanced with the wall space.

Finally they were hung and I felt very satisfied to see months of long hours and hard work come together for this solo show. Exhausted but satisfied I had done all I could I left for home, to return the next morning to set-up for the opening . . .