Next year I will be 60. I am trying to reconcile where all the time has gone. I am starting to realise that my plan to ‘grow up’ at some point, may never actually happen (perhaps more to my delighted surprise than anything).

Each summer I like to take some time off from my workshop and tour schedule. I’ve been at home now for 3 months without needing to get on a plane or wake up at 5am. It’s good for me to do this each summer. Cut the travel right back, stay at home, and work on other things. Which is what I have done.

Print by Jerzy Jędrysiak, I picked up in my 20’s in Prague or Krakow, while travelling around Europe by train.

But while I have been spending a lot more time at home, I started to realise that my home has so many art pieces in it. On the photography front I have a Michael Kenna original, two John Blakemore originals of his kitchen Tulip studies, and also a lovely Charlie Cramer print that I bought directly from him.

It dawned on me that I have this print I bought in Krakow or Prague back in around 1994. Time and memory have made it difficult for me to remember which city. All I know is that it is one or the other - if you know the artists - I would love to know. I’ve had it in a very cheap frame since I bought it whilst inter-railing when I was 26.

What dawned on me was that in the last 32 years - I have never tired of it.

I still love it, just as much as the time I saw it hanging in a shop near the centre of either Prague or Krakow.

It took me a few weeks to realise that I should finally get around to getting a frame for it, that I think it deserves.

I got a beautiful frame made for a watercolour I love of a mountain in Scotland - Suilven, by the Scottish painter John Bellany. It is a family airloom as John was my uncle. It is a much treasured painting and I got it beautifully framed several years ago. And so, I have opted to get my Krakow print framed the same way.

Here is the frame painting by my uncle John:

Somehow, since taking my 32 year old print to the framers to get framed up in a more professional frame, I am feeling as if some kind of wrong has been rightened.

I think there is a mixture of emotions going on for me here. Firstly, I am lamenting being older. I wish I was 26 again. Secondly, I am now recognising that the art that I’ve lived with for 32 years has never tired on me. Third, I am realising that the print has history for me. Fourth: I have never fully respected how important it is to me. I’ve had it in the cheapest frame I could buy since my 20’s.

Little did I know back in 1994 I was buying a print that would accompany me through most of my life.

And yet, here it is.

Begging for a better frame. Because the one that it has lived in for 32 years was always an afterthought.

I’ve come to realise that this print is quite important to me. It’s been here for most of my adult life, and in a way, deserves to be presented to its full potential. Rather than being stuck in a cheap frame that I had always assumed ‘will do’.

And this whole episode has got me thinking.

At some point, we have to come clean about our relationship to the art we have around us.

It is either convenience fodder, or it has great meaning. There is no in-between. We either respect it for what it means to us. Or we don’t.

And I think something changed for me this week. I realised that this print was very important to me, and yet this was not reflected in how I was treating it. I needed to get it framed properly. Because a well framed image is able to show us its full potential. Anything less is really holding it back from us enjoying it to it’s full potential.

One way of making a commitment, a statement to the work being indispensable, is to get it framed professionally. Because once you do that, you acknowledge, in concrete terms, that the work is means more to you than you could possibly explain.

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Postscript: the image is by Polish artist Jerzy Jędrysiak. I used Google Lens tonight to find out who the artist is. So I had bought this image in Krakow, not Prague.