One of the side–effects of working from home on a new computer is that I have good reason to load up a large number of background artworks. I’m not using my own work, but those of the masters, so I can see how various kinds of images should be composed, and, in particular, see good ideas to nick.

image: Paintings by Ekaterina Rebezha

The home working is the key: I no longer need to log in remotely to get stuff done. For many years now, I’ve worked for organisations that provide inadequate tools for the job; they put cost of machines ahead of technical efficiency, so I’ve set up my own systems to be able to do the necessary work without getting screwed up by a lack of resources. In effect, I’ve had a private cloud since the late 1990s.

But that private cloud is constrained by connectivity. Especially in the earlier days, that connectivity was so slow that images on the background of desktops made a noticeable difference to display performance, especially with employers who had cheap and slow connectivity to their offices. So I always kept the desktops plain and clean, to avoid that slowness.

Now, though, complements of Covid–19, I work from home, on fairly decent kit. So I’ve been building up background images, mostly by nipping across to wikimedia and downloading copies of great and not so great paintings.

I’m not being fussy, I’m not restricting myself to my favourite painters, because I consider myself pretty ignorant of much painting. I don’t want to miss out on discoveries. In consequence, this process is taking a lot of time, and I’ve found some wonderful works from artists who are entirely new to me.