Entry 41. Bramwell Annex, second floor, 11 March. Unframed oil on stretched linen, roughly 60 by 45 cm, hung about four centimetres proud of the wall. On the right tacking edge, in soft graphite: "too warm again, 3rd attempt, don't fix in the morning light." Underneath, smaller, "she was right about the ochre." No name, no date. The gallery card said only the painter's initials and a price in pencil that had been erased and rewritten twice.
My method has not changed since I started this. I do not touch anything. I crouch, I read what is visible from a legal angle, and I copy it into the notebook exactly, including spelling. If I cannot read a word I write the shape of it. I photograph nothing, because the two galleries that caught me doing it asked me to stop and they were right to.
Counts so far: 213 pieces examined across seven venues, 68 with writing of any kind on the edge or verso, 22 of those with something that is not inventory data. Inventory data means dimensions, a stock number, an arrow marked TOP, or the word "dry" with a date. Those get logged but they are not the interesting ones.
Complaints about the ground come up most. Eleven instances. "Absorbent, 4 coats, still thirsty." "Sanded to 400, still tooth." One panel at the Kell Street co-op had a whole column of these down the left edge like a receipt, seven lines, each one a different gesso batch with a number beside it. Someone was running a comparison and lost patience around batch 5.
Second most common is scheduling. Dates, times, deadlines that have clearly passed. "Ship Tues" on a panel that was still hanging in August. On the back of a small board at the Harrow Lane rooms: "Mum's birthday, buy card," which I have thought about more than any of the aesthetic notes.
Apologies to the painting itself account for four. The clearest was on a 24 by 30 cm gessoed birch panel, dated 2 Feb in ballpoint: "I ruined you at the neck and I know it." That panel sold. I went back three weeks later to check and the space had a landscape in it instead.
Materials I have seen used, in order of frequency: graphite pencil, ballpoint, charcoal, a red wax marker that smears, and once a fine brush loaded with the same burnt umber as the underpainting, which felt like showing off. Chalk appears only on the backs of frames, never on gesso.
Next visit is the Vantry rooms on the 19th. They rotate stock every six weeks and they hang unframed work with a two-inch gap, which is generous. I want to see whether the birch-panel painter is still using ballpoint. Running total of legible sentences copied: 96.