Autumn is the time of year that I organise a display of my artwork. This year is no exception, and I am currently holding a joint exhibition with fellow Leisure Painter contributor, Tony Slater. As always, when discussing this type of thing, theactual event always seems a long way off, until suddenly, it's bearing down upon you like a great express train!!. Fortunately, this year I've been painting steadily and consistently to avoid any last minute panic. As I view my offspring lovingly, my eyes open wide with horror! (bit of a Halloween moment this) - my paintings are full of the bane of artists, the dreaded black beasts, thunderflies!!. 'Blimey' I think, 'I've got to take them all apart to clean them now' - something that took me two days to do!! This led me carry out an investigation to try and prevent this happening in the future. There seems to be a lot of folk lore out there about avoiding the black beasts - Trevor Waugh always used to advise having a sacrificial painting. (another Halloween moment?) - no, he didn't mean the type of thing you encountered in a Dennis Wheatley novel, what he meant was that you left a painting that you were not very fond of nearest the door. His theory was this was where they came in and so the lazy blighters would climb inside the first comfortable painting they came to. Looking around my studio, I just seemed to have a nice distribution everywhere. There's even one waving to me from behind this flat screen monitor! I've always sealed the back of my paintings with picture framers tape rather than masking tape as I always assumed this was their route in and masking tape always peels back. On closer investigation, I found they tend to come in at the front between the glass and the frame.