Looking at my paintings, which are very close to my heart, I find myself thinking about the end to the Cave Art Now cycle. When I moved from Reading to Motovun in 2003, I brought with me thirty plain boards, which I planned to nurse along for a few years, and I painted the first one of them the following year (“Both Sides of Love,” January 8, 2004). As it turned out, I did nurse them along for quite a few more years than I originally had in mind. In fact, the last board was painted a whole decade after my move (“The End to the Cave Art Now Cycle,” August 22, 2013). In retrospect, I painted three boards per year on the average during this period.

Two things strike me as curious about the cycle a couple of years later. To begin with, how did I come up with the number of plain boards to bring to Motovun? Why thirty, that is? Perhaps more important, have I ever felt sorry not to have brought more boards with me? In this context, have I ever felt sorry about the end of the cycle itself? Concerning the first question, I have no recollection of my reasoning about the number of boards taken from Reading. Perhaps that was the number of boards that could fit into a cardboard box I had at my disposal at the time. As for the second question, I have never felt sorry about the number of boards available to me. For better or worse, I have never felt sorry about the cycle’s end, either.

One possible reason why the cycle’s end has not affected me in any palpable way is that there are many of my boards in the attic of my house in Motovun. Were the house larger, I would put them all on display. Thus I can imagine feeling sorry about the number of boards available to me only in the case I had much more space in which to display them. Along these lines, I can also imagine feeling the need for more boards if they were selling like hotcakes on the art market. In such a case, I would perhaps enjoy painting ever more of them. As a matter of fact, the entire cycle has always catered to my own needs and no-one else’s. Which provides reasonable answers to all my questions about the size of the Cave Art Now cycle.