April 26
Written April 29
Dear Friends and Family,Written April 29
Thursday April 26 saw the opening of Marianne's exhibition of her paintings, hung in the restaurant at the Macrander Hotel, my home-away-from-home in Offenbach. This was the first public showing of her paintings and had involved months of work and arranging.
Marianne had finished 15 paintings. She made business cards. She determined prices. She transported 15 pictures in three separate trips from home to Offenbach, near Frankfurt. She had worked with the hotel event planner, setting one date and then another. Marianne even had to deal with a replacement event planner.
After all this, the hotel sent out invitations, but received too few positive responses to sponsor the evening festivity they had promised. Meanwhile, we had invited friends and made our own plans and, in the end, we stuck with our plans, convincing the hotel to go ahead with hanging the pictures, even if the only people who showed up would be our half-dozen friends.
So, that's what happened. The paintings were hung, the friends came in to look, and we all enjoyed ourselves*. One friend, an art enthusiast colleague from John's work, got enthusiastic about further pushing the commercial prospects of M.H.Trotter. It all sounds pretty exciting.
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Marianne and John
(Link to SOME of the paintings.)
* ps:
Not
everyone enjoyed themselves. John started off doing fine, being
the artist-spouse and chief photographer, but then started feeling
faint. Really faint. One thing led to another and the
Trotter Opening ended abruptly with a (no siren) ambulance ride to
Frankfurt's University Hospital. Several hours and tests later,
no cause or underlying problem had been identified, so we returned to
the hotel. Too much excitement for a single day!