The window of my show had two purposes. I wanted to display things to the outside, and I wanted to keep the area semi-private for the Private View itself. I had a screen and I decided to put my works in progress on the outside. The blue glass still life was finished but unmounted. The Palette Still Life in Oils, ditto – it was a grouping of my tools painted on my curiously reflective palette, which is oiled most days by my cleaning process. The Cezanne skulls and the Girl with a Shiny Earring were not fully finished, but were good enough to put out there for the sake of interest.

Inside the screen I had my four coloured tonal squares of red, yellow, blue and green, touching in a line. Above those, on a ledge, I had four jigsaw pieces in the same, but flat, colours and different arrangements. That had good impact from a distance, but not from the same viewing point as the self-portrait.

After the opening night, I should have moved the screen to allow more light into the room, and to let people see in, but I did not do that until the show was finished; I was hesitant to change something that had worked, in the hopes of finding something better.