The Artist's Lot

The artist's daughter wakes up on the top bunk, a crisp light streaming through the gaps in the long thick curtain. She yawns. Her mouth is dry and her head still full of dreams. Slowly, she raises that head and bends her shoulders and looks round. From where she is looking she can see the artist and artist's husband in their bedroom with the door open across the small hall. She shuffles across the duvet cover and makes it down the small stepladder attached to the side of the bunks. I hear her feet reach the carpet. A few moments later she is standing by our door yawning. Her eyes are rubbed and she makes it to the living room. Our son, her brother, is still asleep. He is lying on his back and like a gunshot victim has his arms spread back. But there is a smile on his face and it is the smile of humour and warmth. After he wakes up and also wanders into the living room the two of them are instructed to wash their teeth and dress. After some breakfast, toast on this occasion, a friend of theirs arrives whose sister is ill and father unable to take the healthy one to school, so she has come to spend a half an hour with us. These, I was thinking as I watched from afar, are the underlying realities of life. This is the true canvas from which the artist's work is primed. And yet there is no humdrum in the work. There is no ordinary. The work is on a far larger plain than that. And there is nothing plain about it.