Teresa is one of my neighbours, a very encouraging woman. She works as a coach, which isn’t the point of this, and she has a picture I made for her some years ago.
She is on my mailing list, so she knew my portraits show at Burgh House was coming, and she thought I should tell the street.
I couldn’t bring myself to share it in my own street’s WhatsApp group. It just felt like: I’m not sure that’s what this group is for. And I am one of the admins, so it would have felt a bit like making use of my position.
So I didn’t.
But Teresa very generously shared it instead with the WhatsApp group for Lyndale Avenue nearby.
And she told me that somebody from Lyndale who had come to the show went back to the WhatsApp group and warmly recommended it to her neighbours.
I think that had quite an effect, because several others came afterwards. Including a couple I saw outside Burgh House on the Saturday, having evidently been unsuccessful getting in. Amazingly, gratifyingly, they came back on Sunday.
One morning, when I happened to be out of the gallery, Teresa came with M. – who likewise returned a day or so later, and said the most lovely things. I wish I could remember them. I wish she was my marketing manager.
So there we are: I couldn’t mention it to my own street, but a neighbour (Teresa) said something to the next street along, then another neighbour said it after her, and people came all the way up to Hampstead to look at drawings of strangers in their offices.
Some of them introduced themselves. Some of them didn’t. So this will have to do as a thank-you.
It really did mean a lot.