Have You Ever Lost a Painting?

I have egg on my face.  I was doing some organizing of the large room that serves as my studio, office and storage area and found a painting that had been missing for nearly a year.  The painting had been at a local gallery where it was being scanned for reproductions, a process that took months in itself, and then when the scan was finally ready, the painting had vanished, and neither gallery or myself had any record or memory of the painting's whereabouts. 

Out to Pasture - watercolor 20" x 28" by Angela Fehr

I am thrilled to have my painting back.  Seeing it again was like looking at an old friend's loved and familiar face,dearer than remembered.  I'm not so thrilled that I have to phone the gallery tomorrow and apologize for not remembering that I had taken it back into possession.  I will be asking the gallery about their usual policy for record-keeping; other galleries I have worked with have had me sign in and sign out my artwork and I'm surprised this wasn't done here.  But my own record keeping is also at fault.

How do you inventory your art?  I am not currently a prolific painter - at under ten paintings a year it shouldn't be hard for me to keep an inventory list, and surely modern technology should help with this.  While I like to think I have a good handle on the mechanics of art as a business, I fall short when it comes to keeping inventory and planning work for exhibitions.  I want to use this particular episode as a motivator to me to get my art into a database, including its current whereabouts and history.