"Oi You, Buonarroti, No"

I'm sitting looking at a bunch of pictures on a wall. They are mostly simple still lifes with one or two abstracts, all painted in muted greys with hints of watery yellow. "What do you think of them?" my partner says. "Not a lot." I reply. She: "A lot of them have sold." Me: "They must be cheap." She goes and looks at the price list. "They aren't." Me: "What do you think of them?" She: "I like them." Me: "Why?" She: "They're restful." Me: "They're gloomy and have little to say." She: "No, they're cool and gentle." Me: "They're just the kind of dull colours we're surrounded with outdoors most days of the year, why would you want to bring them into the house as well?" She: "I'd buy one, they would fit in well with the decor." Now that is almost terminally depressing. Then the penny drops. All those odd remarks over the years. Variations on the theme of "We love your work, but we can't really fit it in the house anywhere." They are talking about decor. What they really mean is "Your bright bold colours are nice, but unfortunately anything that isn't dirty grey or muddy brown will clash with our paintwork." Here is the stark choice, move somewhere bright, dull my palette, or continue to starve. This is the powerful pressure of market forces. The majority of the money out here is in the pockets of Barbour jacketed, Telegraph reading riff raff lookin' for a nice Huntin' print for the hall, so I'm semi stuffed to start with. Oh feck it, I can turn my hand to some nice dinky little ink sketches of half timbered houses can't I?.......can't I? Surely pictures should be a bit more than an extension of a decorating theme shouldn't they? Imagine the scene: Pope Julius the second enters the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo is high above on the scaffold. He has been lying on his back for the last four years, painting looking upwards. Apart from the tortuous physical difficulties involved, anyone who has ever painted in this position knows of the tendency of the paint to run down the brush, over your hand and down your sleeve, rather than up on the ceiling where you want it. Glancing heavenward the pope starts, then steps backward aghast. "Oi you, Buonarroti, No!" He bellows "All those bright colours will upstage my stylish decorating scheme of magnolia columns and eau de nil shot silk wallpaper. You're off the smeging job, I'm bringing in Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and the Changing Rooms team."