No Pressure

The gallerist is coming to see the artist next week, not this week as it happens. I met the gallerist myself today. I met her in her gallery. A broad, refined space which literally gave me shelter from the storm. (My light brown cordoruoy coat looked like a cammy leather afterthought.) Immediately, I thought the gallerist charming, bright, unaffected, and the gallery measured, respectful, epic. Her thoughts stroked the work on the wall, which were largely contemplative and contemporary landscapes. I enjoyed talking to her - we even discussed the seventieth birthday celebrations last weekend - and I hope the meeting next week is a success, because as people alone the artist and the gallerist seem a cut above the rest, and they could be good for each other. A good service. This in fact is one of the things with the artist's work. It requires an unlazy mind to appreciate it properly and the artist's journey to date is not one in which the participants are particularly required to party, talk 'dosh', or deliberately lack cohesion. Its society should bubble, yes; the talk should prosper, certainly; but it also needs the right space and the right person, and this one person I met today was impressive. Meanwhile my trip grows closer and my running in the morning marginally less cumbersome.

On Natural Selection (Music)

I start this with http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y playing on my headphones. Click on it if you like. Minimize the image and listen to it while you're reading, if you can. Otherwise welcome back, over 10 minutes later. The artist has been listening to it. She has been quite literally attacking the rockface of her new piece more than just a little motivated by the piece. I have had it on my headphones a number of times as I've surfed the topics and regions I'm most interested in at the moment. This piece of music - 'a tapestry of voices,' someone has called it - was written over 500 years ago. Can you imagine such a thing? It sounds to me so contemporary. Turn up the volume. Go on. As I write, the artist is sitting on the bright red sofa with her sister, who has come to stay, and they are both giggling as they try to find a film to watch. I can see the backs of their two heads and they are like characters in a cartoon to me. I suppose the caption could be something along the lines of ... Sister 1: "How about the Sound of Music?' Sister 2: 'No, I want to watch a film.' Actually the music has stopped because I paused to drink some tea and briefly joined in the conversation. What shall I play now? I know. Wait a moment. There. Now I am listening to http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1oitSlHi3MY. You will probably have gathered but it is by the late great Nick Drake, and it really should be played loud. A few times. Play it again. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1oitSlHi3MY.

Our Daughter's Friend's Artist Father

Our 8-year-old daughter played at a friend's house after school today. Her father rather kindly brought her back and accepted an invitation to stay for some tea. Also helpfully, he is an artist with a studio in a creekside warehouse not so very far from here and responded immediately to the artist's new piece on the wall as he stepped over the shoes into the living room. I took one or two steps back myself, knowing how much it means to the artist to have an in-shop discussion about her work with a fellow artist, no matter how different each artist may be, either in exploit or ambition. Actually I have mentioned this person before - the mother, whom we like very much too, is also an artist, and a teacher - and it was good to see him relax and enter fully into a rich vein of thoughts about all manner of works. What really took off in the conversation was the topic of the artist the artist of this blog had recently seen - and spoke about - with our daughter. A woman in her nineties, no less, still making work often fuelled by memories from her childhood, and not all of them good. While the artist of this blog would be the first to admit to a happy childhood herself, it is fair to say she is quick to acknowledge the potency of childhood, whatever the shade, as a source of inspiration. No, our daughter's friend's father is a gentle and thoughtful man. His kindness reminds me of the opposite, namely that so many people one encounters these days can come across, intentionally or otherwise, as selfish in comparison to someone like him, and, though I feel pompous saying it, generally unengaged by a social conscience. I don't quite know where this comes from, this disengagement, but there are so few people taking an interest in where our culture is going, or indeed what kind of a world we now live in. No, the conversation was good and went some way towards reminding me once again of why it is I like certain artists. Yes, it is their singular need to create something beautiful. But it is also their keen awareness.

"When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country: I make up for lost time when I come home."*

We are back now from our successful long birthday weekend in the countryside. The children have just had their hair washed and are supposed to be in bed. But I can hear them whispering from their bunks, like softly mutinous bedfellows. The artist is in the kitchen making hot milk and wiping surfaces. I am at the round red table and have been going through numerous details relating to the fresh confirmation I have just received for my imminent trip to the war zone. It is strange being back in the city after the beautiful segue we undertook to the countryside. The traffic outside our little flat sounds louder than I remember and the footsteps from the flat above seem almost intrusive. But footsteps are the least of my issues. I have a lot of sorting out to do. Meanwhile the artist now puts on the kettle, having given the hot milk to the children. It is funny how something as seemingly inane as the particular sound of a kettle signifies more than anything that feeling of being home. (A few minutes later, I take a sip of hot peppermint tea.) I must go running tomorrow morning, I am thinking. The artist will no doubt return to her new piece in the morning with a kind of unharsh vengeance. She will be remembering again that she has a visit - we hope - from the elusive but important gallerist in a few days time. I must admit, the greatest rush I felt when we stumbled in after our journey was seeing the artist's work on the wall again. For example I was impressed by how much of the colour violet she has managed to incorporate into what is a dramatic piece. In fact, the pet name she has given this piece is the name of the country I am bound for.
*Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The Street Lights of Eternity

I gazed at the stars with the artist tonight. No light pollution. No urban mesh. One constellation that was particularly outstanding was Orion the hunter and his famous 'belt' and the great cloud of dust and gas known, I have read, as the sword of Orion nebula. It made our viewing playful as well as instructive. (Anything beyond the earth's atmosphere is an impossible distance; but at least it teaches you scale.) Earlier I had worked out without much pleasure that we were located close in the valley to where a woman who once commissioned the artist to do a portrait of a wealthy poet's wife committed suicide not so long ago. She died from drinking weedkiller. It was a terribly sad story. As I held the artist and we continued to stare at the sky, I saw what I think must have been Mercury to the east. I was also remembering the history of suicide not only in the woman's family but in her husband's too. I remembered climbing the side of a mountain in the land to the chilly north once with three people after a hearty lunch, one of whom was the daughter of one of the most renowned novelists of the last century who famously committed suicide. Later, years later, alas, so did she. 'Self-murder,' it used to be called. That would just about sum it up were it not for the other people such as her it can kill too. I don't know of any suicide in my own family - I champion, however clumsily at times, life - but ghastly it must be when it comes. A man from the small valley where we have been staying responsible many years ago for weaver's jobs eventually committed suicide after failing to preserve many such jobs after the introduction of the mechanical loom. Furthermore, not so far away, in a neighbouring principality, there has been a spate of over a dozen suicides among a group of teenagers. (I even spent time once writing an article about a group of people working for a well known charity created to stop people from killing themselves - http://www.samaritans.org/) That was a lesson. Anyway, I returned indoors with the artist from looking at the sky, both of us lit up, alive, glad to be alive, wary, strong, aware. Life. Sweet life.

The Lights Above And The Valley B'low

The artist awoke for no particular reason. Perhaps it was a jolt in a dream, the imaginary thud of huge and heavy hand shears, or the sound of ancient spindle and bullrushes. I was already awake, thinking a thousand thoughts. (Many of them good.) I recommended the artist get out of bed, just as I had done, and walk to the French windows. As the artist crept across the room, our son continued sleeping in the sofabed beside me and our daughter in the large double-bed. The artist paused and parted the thin linen curtains. It must have been about three in the morning. I watched as she stared gently out at the moonlight illuminating an entire valley. A single electric light shone like solitude from about a mile away. Other than that, it was as if we were the only people in the world. With a silhouetted nod of the head, she agreed about the beauty and returned quietly to bed. There used to be so many clothiers and millers and shearmen and weavers round these parts, some of them the best in the world. Streams ran with scarlet dye where the military uniforms were made - it was also the colour of royalty - and someone somewhere must surely have seen the colour as some kind of prophecy of blood. I saw no such menace when I looked out, nor I believe did the artist. I can admit to a feeling of brief sadness but felt a presence of greater authority too. Round these parts, weavers regularly worked sixteen or seventeen hour days and mothers and children often lived in bare, cold and empty cottages. A famous soldier sent to quell the increasingly angered workforce wrote uncomfortably of their hardship. Last night, though, the light was magical, transcendental, and I saw the artist in a new - moonlight they call it - light.

Three Score Years and Ten

I have the unusual pleasure of writing this entry on my laptop from the lap of what I can only see as dark countryside. My son is on the bed beside me playing with a toy diver in a frogsuit while voices drift like bubbles through the old and commodious farmhouse. We have begun celebrating the artist's father's seventieth birthday and it is already a fine and handsome occasion. I am still feeling for the artist, though, as the gallerist, I am afraid to say, cancelled again at the very last moment. I had already blown up the balloon the artist promised would be flying as humorous indication of where on the busy road we lived. In fact I had just tied it to the tree outside and was about to disappear when I saw the artist on the phone looking dejected. Twice the gallerist has done this. She has rescheduled for next Thursday but still it gnaws. Again, I suppose, the party-line must be to be patient, to make allowances, but deep within I know the artist is disgruntled as well as disappointed. At least she knows it is no reflection of the work, I hope. Meanwhile my son tells me that where we are staying is no one's house because no one lives here, an absence not dissimilar to the one experienced by the artist today. Still, her father's seventy years are being celebrated and this is why we are here. A special person. Very. The type who would be embarrassed by such accolade. The artist's mother read out an accurately sprightly and endearingly unpretentious poem by the fire. Our daughter read one too, full of the cadences of the right kind of hope. The artist for her part has made a beautiful book, each of the drawings depicting various moments of the father's impressive and intelligently constructed life so far. (I watched her draw them with bowed head as if in a kind of melodic trance.) Now, I can smell the firewood on my hands from the fire I made and will return upstairs to the firelit party. (We are sleeping downstairs.)

Lighting tomorrow with today

The artist is expecting a visit from the gallerist tomorrow after which we go to the countryside to celebrate the artist's father's seventieth birthday. (The children have been virtual tourists this evening, exploring the rooms in 360 degrees on the computer.) This may also mean being separated from the blog as I do not think the farmhouse where we will be staying, generously rented for three days by the artist's parents, has internet access. I feel mildly uncomfortable about this. It is as if underneath the neo-literary and pseudo-diaristic pleasure of writing it, some kind of useful if not too metronomic irrigation also takes place. Still, I will have to get used to being without it anyway as I doubt I will be writing one in the war zone. It might be interesting advertising creativity as a life force where many lives are threatened but I am convinced neither of its practicality nor of its tact. In the meantime, the artist is being incredibly relaxed about the gallerist's visit tomorrow. This is not arrogance on the artist's part and for me is reassuring. I think it has finally begun to sink in that this work really is as special as I drone on about. It is a wonderful thing self-belief and I understand any natural inclination towards modesty. I have touched upon this about the artist before and admire greatly hre absence of loud and garish pride. In the end, it is a fine line between modesty and invisibility and we shall just have to see what tomorrow may bring. ('Yesterday is but today's memory,' as Kahlil Gibran said, 'and tomorrow is today's dream.') Two weeks ago we had a dress rehearsal for the visit, a kind of useful false alarm, so it may be a winning performance.

Working towards a wholeness

As I sat on the bright red sofa an hour ago and turned my head, instead of it being my tireless son's eye I caught - he had ducked behind the sofa - it was the artist's new piece on the wall. Like our son, it is still in its infancy, no longer teething but still early-glowing, and the ambition of detail is not only apparent but arresting. This is a good thing from the point of view of the piece, but also in the way it informs all the other pieces. With each piece, in other words, the artist gets closer and closer to a kind of collective detail. Where before the chief characteristic was content, it is now also detail. I have suggested this before but never have I seen it so clearly. Detail as a form of visual respect. Industry as a representation of character. Time as proof of commitment. I wish I could go say more but I don't want to give any kind of game away; not at this early stage. Nor has the artist been lending her hand simply to that: she has been busy on another project and is now the deserved recipient of some early sleep on the aforementioned sofa. Indeed, her head is pressed against a cushion made by her mother and all is still in the house. At least I thought it was until I turned my head a few moments ago and saw our son pop daringly around the bedroom door. He was in his pyjamas and cannot sleep. I hand-signaled with a finger across my lips for him to be quiet. It seems to have worked, leaving me now to rest my eyes on the new piece again. I am entranced, pleasantly puzzled, avid. Physically, I am thinking, while there is nothing strictly speaking of the mandala* about the work itself, it does establish a kind of sacred space and is an aid to meditation.
*Any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.

The Artist's Swan

Sometimes, like one of those Bewick's swans that breed in the Arctic in the area surrounding the Kara Sea and now reside on the small gentle pond I pass most days, you just want to build enough momentum to get those big old wings flapping again and take off. It's not that you don't like the pond. In fact you care about the pond more than anything else in the world - it's where your family stay. It's just that you need the big picture and you need to hunt. Now, hunting isn't exactly what you might call particularly swan-like behaviour, but when there's not much in or on your pond and you know where to look, you must go there. Especially when you've an important artist and mother by the pond, who needs time to make one day what may be a priceless picture of that pond, let alone two beautiful cygnets. Thankfully, I know it's important to look around, to check the temperature, to be informed. This old swan likes to do that anyway. Take that talk I attended the other day, the one given by the principal spokesman to the largest military alliance in the world. One hell of a smart swan. But what wasn't mentioned then and maybe should be mentioned more now are some pretty salient facts, namely what have just been deemed the four key threats to the security of this planet.

1. Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

2. The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

3. Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

4. The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

Now, few of the other creatures I meet flying around this small airspace here seem to care much about these points, though they do have beautiful nests. Especially the politicians. I don't know, even in a powerless kind of way as I peer from high above the pond at the horizon, I'm sure I'm a better swan for being informed and this will make me a better hunter.

The Artist and her Daughter

You seem to like wearing clogs when you work.
They have such a history behind them ... (stepping up to work) ... good working shoes too.
Tell me about your day out yesterday, just you and our daughter.
It was lovely, lovely to spend time with her ... just the two of us. She's only eight but she's so receptive to things. (stepping back from work) We went to see a show.
Did she enjoy it?
Well, yes ... (working again) ... In the first room were all these paintings with female bodies trapped by houses. Also, a huge cage-like box or cell with a replica of the artist's childhood home in it ... (light chuckle) ... I was laughing with her. Explaining how it's not good to feel trapped at home with no way out. That it's good to find something you really want to do in life. Something you care about. And not spend all day cleaning ... (a smile) ... unless it gives you a huge amount of satisfaction ... (stepping through mess) ... No, home, I said, is a good place but that for some people it can be a trap.
How are you getting on with the new piece?
Very good. I've just removed something from it which helps it greatly ... (angling head; working away at surface) ... but I want to talk more about the show we saw.
Go on.
The rooms were like dreams, bad dreams, and memories ... (stifled sneeze) ... I talked to her about how memories aren't always truthful. One room had all these chairs ... a torture chair, little chairs. And it was all about the artist's background, her father's job, and something that had happened in her childhood, which she was very angry about. Which I think is extraordinary, because she's in her nineties, this artist. And to be still making work about it? It's incredible.
What effect does a show like this have on an 8-year old, do you think?
A good effect, it's good ... (sitting down) ... She was fascinated by the fact the artist used so many different materials. (standing up) And that you could literally walk into these imaginary worlds. I think it was also very significant that it was a woman artist we were seeing. No, she was very sweet. (a beat) Inquisitive. Just really enjoying it. We had a really good time. (looking intently at work) And because she's been exposed to art from such an early age, she never wonders what it's for. (working hard) The other thing I loved ... is the fact it was also about motherhood.

The Quote of the Day

'I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for,' said Georgia O'Keeffe. 'Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in,' said Amy Lowell. 'We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies,' said Picasso. 'All art requires courage,' said Anne Tucker. 'Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail,' said Theodore Dreiser. 'Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do,' said Edgar Degas. 'Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art,' said Wynetka Ann Reynolds. 'It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work,' said Henry Moore. 'Pictures must not be too picturesque,' said Ralph Waldo Emerson. 'Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better,' said André Gide. 'Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass,' said Fran Lebowitz. 'Great art picks up where nature ends,' said Marc Chagall. 'When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?",' said Howard Ikemoto. 'What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit,' said John Updike. 'The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life,' said Henry Miller. 'Erm,' said the artist of this blog, interrupted by her 5-year-old son who was refusing to go to sleep, 'art is something you need so badly but don't realise until you see it.'

On A Winter's Afternoon

Our son was asking me so many questions on the train I had run out of answers by the time we reached our destination. As a further token of respect for the artist, I had disappeared with the children into the centre of the capital with some tokens of another kind to spend on clothes. Our daughter was serene throughout, enjoying her brother's inquiring, and watched everyone and everything as the grey clouds and threatened rain competed later with the sales and aimlessly wandering couples. We talked about the artist as we walked, each agreeing she was really committed to what she was doing. It is a curious but compelling thing, the artist locked like a hermit into her work like this. Any time spent without something to work on must be hellish for her and though she leaps like a rare grasshopper from one blade of work to the other she always seems to make it across. Presently the large green blade she has landed on is swaying slightly, but she is safe, her strong paws clamped gecko-like on the flat but expanded part of the leaf that is above the sheath and away from the stem. Is art insecurity or security? I suppose it is a mixture of both, though to the children, I suspect, it still appears as natural as breathing. But I am certainly aware it involves for the artist pain as well as pleasure. At one point while still walking we passed a large group of people chanting against the tyranny of their country, their foreign voices filling the street with chatter. As we drew closer, we walked faster, though the children at no stage appeared scared. When we returned home the artist had been working for over four hours. She didn't say anything after giving everyone, including me, a kiss and warm embrace, but I could tell she was more than a little curious about what I thought of the work to date on the new piece. I was deeply impressed by the work and intimidated by it too.

A Good Place

The artist's brand new piece on the wall still looks very abstract. The precise subject matter, the mood, tone, allegory - call it what you will - is not yet fully revealed. And yet we know it is there. Whatever it is, we know it exists. We have seen this happen before. It is part of the endearing - and enduring - ritual. As for the artist herself, we most definitely have lost her. She is a good mother, a great mother, and doesn't miss a trick, but every time she begins a new piece it is like watching someone disappear through an invisible curtain into another room. Imaginary candles are lit in skilled silence. Chaos is left like a pair of scuffed shoes at the door. Surfaces, like emotions, are smoothed. Hope, perhaps, is reinvented. Added to which is this surreal image of the artist herself standing on a small blue plastic stool in order to work on the upper section of the piece. Her right arm stretches up like a waving dancer frozen in mid-wave. The index finger and thumb work with incredible detail, but the entire body is straining. From over here by the round red table, the artist looks like something conjured up by Rene Magritte. The red clogs she wears add to the confusion, as does our bare-chested son passing with an impossibly intricate pirate ship pointing from his belly. (To me, you can almost hear the whirr of Ingmar Bergman's cameraman.) Of course, I realise that by deliberately not releasing any of the artist's work on this blog I am in effect talking to a blind person by half-describing - and never showing - what I see. It is not my job at this stage to show the work; it is for the artist, when she is ready, and has found the right person. But, who knows, you may not be disappointed. Besides, we live in an age where everything has to be instant, there is no foreplay, and as a result no one is relaxed when conclusions are drawn or opinions are formed, if we can even remember what our opinion is. Our daughter meanwhile has fallen asleep on the bright red sofa ... and our son is in his bunk with his pirate ship standing by. As for the artist, she is a million miles away, in a good place.

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace within it

I have just returned from a talk given across town by the principal spokesman for the largest military alliance in the world. When I walked back into the living room at home, where the artist had just stopped working, our 5-year-old son popped his little head up from behind the bright red sofa, and let out a sigh of relief. There had been a severe electrical storm and he had been worried about me, and was still a little worried for himself. I looked at the artist, then back at our son. I placed a hand on his warm shoulder and kissed the top of his head. Where exactly studies of conflict fit into this is debatable. Maybe it is some kind of weird muscularisation of a strong sense of peace. A feeling of unfinished business. An appetite. A new career. A craving for content. An affirmative thirst for knowledge. A working hunch. I am sitting at the round red table now. The artist is on the sofa. Her new piece is on the wall, to her right, and looks as abstract as camouflage, especially as it begins only in places to take shape. Anyway, our son is asleep next to her and the news on the TV shows a plane looking sad, broken, deflated, next to its intended runway. There must have been, oh, two dozen nationalities in the room where the talk took place. It was a public discussion, open to anyone: there just isn't that large an appetite these days for subjects such as agreements to mutual defence in response to attacks by external parties. Only, external parties weren't really discussed, not in the intended sense, as the organisation in question is a kind of external party in itself in the theatre of operations where most of the discussion was centred. I stare at my son still asleep on the bright red sofa - a gentle smile on his face - and think about the children in the war zone who never wake up. The idea, lest we forget, is for that number, that figure, to come down.

Note of Many Colours

I was given the rare privilege of selecting some materials for the artist today and as a result was confronted upstairs in the art shop by a blizzard of colours. There were so many to choose from I felt like a trapper walking into a psychedelic colourstorm. A colour freak told there were 16.8 million colours. What I hadn't anticipated was that the precise ones I had been asked to zero in on for the artist would end up taking me back with equal melodrama to when I was sixteen. I really was right back there hitching across the continental mainland into the very same colours, slowly making my way through one of the great mountain range systems. Witnessed from the passenger seat of a silent stranger's truck were sun-violet peaks and what I could now read were ultramarine violet rockfaces, cool grey road surfaces, purple brown road signs, phthalo blue wild flowers, and, when we stopped, blue grey salamanders and choughs. Flights are very cheap for the young today so the need to hitch in order to see the world is perhaps less intense. Every time I was to hitch across that continent, however, I was always exposed to the same degree of beauty, the picturesque and picaresque. I am obliged today to wonder just how much of that is lost to the modern young traveller, or does nothing really change? It's just that we seem only to court airports and lookalike franchises these days. A journey seems no longer a journey, just a means to reach a destination. Furthermore, never knowing where your next lift was coming from meant every day feeling like you were an artist in an art shop. Anyway, I returned with the colours the artist had requested and am watching her now. She is on the floor by the wall. It is shortly before midnight. She is beginning her new piece.

"Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing 'Embraceable You' in spats" *

Allow me to tell you something about one of the artist's pieces on the wall. It is placed to the right of the one being worked on presently, though it feels just as present. Basically it is a wilfully executed image of a tree, a laurel tree, in a fertile garden. It is like the garden of life and most of the image is like a controlled explosion of leaves and plants and ... well, life. There are flowers - yellow tulips, one or two red - and leaves and shrubs, and herbs, everywhere. Running through the piece is a lazy and lyrical half-hidden old wooden garden fence, not unlike a toy train pushed together by a child. To the right in the image, if you look closely enough, is a child, a boy, pulling a face. And yet the piece is not about him but about the tree, the garden. He is perhaps simply our chorus. And there is more. Through some of the laurel leaves you can see a hint of blue sky, but this is so framed by even more leaves and branches you have to work very hard to identify it as sky at all. I can remember the day the artist hunted out this image. Now it is on the living room wall awaiting the visit of a gallerist in a week or so. But it is reminding me of something else. Not just that you can be both orderly and wild, creative and masterly, at the same time. It also reminds me that what you see is not always what you get. (As if it wasn't enough in the first place.) I say this only because something was to happen we did not know at the time. You see, the laurel tree was a foot or so over the fence from the garden of the basement where we used to live. That is to say before we moved into the basement next door - yes, the very one with the garden housing the laurel tree in the piece on the wall. But wait for it, there is even more. Within a few days of moving in - almost a year ago to the day as it happens - the tree was blown over in a forceful gale and filled the entire garden like a beached whale before being chopped into pieces and taken away.
*Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935)

The Husband's Artist

How are you?
Bit tired.
What were you doing today?
Working on my roots piece.
Did it go well?
Yep ... (long pause) ... very enjoyable ... (yawn) ... very.
Do you like the phrase 'squeezing water out of a stone'?
I do. Why? (a smile) Is that how it feels talking to me at the moment? (another smile) I'm sorry ... I feel a bit like I'm still in hibernation ... I'm hoping the person I know I am will be out by the end of the week. (a beat) Roll on spring. That's what I say.
What was the last good film you saw?
'Sherrybaby'.
What do you learn about yourself through your children?
That the calmer I am, the calmer they are.
What are you reading?
'On Chesil Beach'.
Any good?
Not sure really ... (gently placing down book) ... it doesn't feel like a rollicking read.
What are your thoughts about your next piece?
I'm really looking forward to starting it. (more alert) It's going to be quite a hard-edged landscape. Quite different to any of the other ones. It's going to be very strange ... but colour-wise very beautiful.
What are your greatest strengths?
My persistence. Following my work through. Sticking to the point, I think. Really thoroughly trying to work things out through my pictures. (relaxedly staring at desert lamp) I'm just trying to challenge myself the whole time.
What is it you notice?
How ... (much thought) ... people treat their children.

The Artist's Son

Do you like being interviewed?
No.
Your sister said she wasn't sure if you would be an artist one day. What do you think? I mean, do you want to be, would you like to be, an artist?
No. (long pause as enigmatic 5-year-old continues working on a picture using a pair of scissors, green, red, and black card, white paper, some ink drawing, some writing) I just don't.
Why?
Because I don't. I don't know what I'm going to be. (shouting) Mum, do you have to do something when you're older?
What's that film you've been watching online a lot recently?
It's called 'Wonderful World of Weird'. I like it because there's weird things on it ... (excited; obscure) Instead of birthday cakes you can have a pie and inside there's a letter ... it's just a card.
You draw a lot but when do you like drawing most?
I just do it when I want to.
Do you know what a blog is?
No.
What's your favourite colour?
Black.
What's your favourite painting?
I'll show you it ... (he leaves the room but soon returns) ... I don't know where it is. Anyway, it's all brown, like a square, and there's a black square too. It's in the Rothko Room. Mark Rothko! Stop asking me questions ... (working on picture again) Mummy, if I put this on top of the page it'll be like an aeroplane ... (placing cut-out plane on picture) Can you write 'Aeroplanes'?
Do you think it would be different if your mother wasn't an artist?
Stop.
What's your favourite music?

The Artist's Daughter

I'd like to talk to you about having a mother as an artist. For starters, what's it like for you living with an artist who is your mother?
(Artist: You can be honest.)
It's exciting. It's ... wonderful. (eating melon) It's very different from other houses here. And it's also quite weird because other artists have studios but we have a sitting room. Also, when she is working, sometimes I like to watch what she's doing. But I don't want to bother her while she's working. And I just like doing normal things like drawing, reading ... just bits and pieces like that. Can we go to another question?
What do you think is the main difference between artists and other people?
Um, I'm not being rude to people who aren't artists, but it's more exciting having a mother who's an artist.
What do you think of the mural your mother did at school?
It was quite strange having it at school at first. But when I got used to it, I thought it was a brilliant idea. And lots of other people in my class loved it too.
When do you feel at your most creative?
It depends obviously ... on what I feel like. But, um, I most prefer being creative when I come back from school ... and at the weekends ... and the holidays.
Have you thought any more about whether or not you might become an artist one day?
Em, I would, but there's lots of other things I'd like to do as well. I'd like to be a gymnast. A swimmer. A journalist. But I can't name them all because I'd like to do lots of different things.
If you had a blog what would it be called?
The Artist's Daughter.
Do you think your brother will be an artist when he's older?
Not necessarily. But I really don't know.
Describe the room. You can type your answer if you want.
Its nice ... (typing) ... to have all of the pictures up when she is working but sometimes the floor gets a bit dirty.

A Plinth, A Plinth, My Kingdom For A Plinth

A darting train through the rain on a trip into town to see an old friend of mine with the artist. That was how the day began. Once the children were parked with poise by their mother at school, that is, and after tending to other more singular responsibilities. This friend, a rose of a leader in her field, a guardian with tact in fact, once commissioned the artist to do a portrait of her first set of twins - she has six children now and is a wonderful force of nature. Anyway, the three of us were keen to get together again. After sorting out some business to do with the artist's next piece, we arrived early and I watched the rain lash the famous plinth in the nearby square with a pinch of disdain for its notoriety. A plinth famous for its controversial visiting sculptures no less, in this instance a kind of unloved stack of architectural glee. Indeed a debate still rages about what should or should not feature there, and more and more outlandish ideas are generated like self-conscious scarves around the necks of precisely the sorts of people on a bad day you might secretly want to wring. Actually, that wringing bit doesn't sound like me. More seriously, the fear of doing something to match the other sculptures in the square has left grown men and women confuse art with petty squabbling to such a degree that the whole house of contemporary art comes down once again, and I must admit I am reluctant to do the same now, though I fear it may be too late. I know what I would put there. An impressively vast sculpture of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. You may know who he is. He was the man who created the World Wide Web. This for example. Which he did to allow simple folk like me to share information. Also, instead of having it patented, he actually insisted on it being free and therefore available to all. Anyway, over three large bowls of soup, the world was dissected and found to be whole. Haiku-like, families and friendships were discussed. One or two complexities were explained. And a kind of unquestionable warmth ruled the roost, which, given the weather, was practical as well as a pleasure. Outside, meanwhile, one or two hunched and lonely figures, drenched by karate-chop rain, passed by. (I even knew one of them.) But when we were outside again ourselves, the sun had come out, most of the lonely figures seemed to have mysteriously dispersed, most that is, not all, and even the art on the plinth looked ... well, still pretty weak.

The Artist's Perspective

So the gallerist couldn't visit as arranged to view the new work because too many people at the gallery were sick. No argument there. The artist herself was sick for two weeks. A new date has been fixed. You have to be philosophical. I'm experiencing delays too. But there is no point in either of us acting like the only people on the planet. Good has already come out of it. Before I left the flat this morning we cleared and cleaned the living room, sliding the bright red sofa against the wall and getting out seven of the pieces. We sat down on the sofa together and viewed the work. The work to me looked formidable in the morning light and it's obvious that the consistent line of detail in the pieces has become its chief characteristic. The artist was fine about the cancellation. We never used to be as reasonable about pitfalls as this. Perhaps we are turning a corner. Impatience can thwart. Besides, exposure to other people's problems can soon put your own into perspective. For a country with so much wealth there is an incredible amount of poverty here alone. I was thinking this on the train today. But apparently half the world - nearly three billion people - live on less than two dollars a day. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. Thirty thousand. Anup Shah of Global Issues states that some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Incredible. So, I guess, the gallerist postponing her visit by two weeks because people have flu is what you might call, in this light, or dark, acceptable.

The Barber and the Tramp

After awaiting more kind words from the war zone, something I suspect I will have to cease talking about shortly, I left the artist by the wall in the living room working on her latest piece. I then walked with a kind of studious but uncomfortable gait under what I call the city's biggest sky - it is across a vast and urban stretch of grass pocked only with crows and history - before dipping through the shops and houses by the station and having a haircut. Only the first woman who began cutting my hair cut her finger so badly she couldn't continue and another woman eventually had to take over. Beforehand, blood kept pouring from this poor woman's index finger, and as I was the only person in the shop with her at the time, I felt especially responsible. With one of those ridiculous hairdresser's sheets still across me, I quickly turned on the tap and asked the poor woman - by now threatening to faint - to sit down and place her finger under the tap, which I now had running with lots of cold water. As she sat there as pale as a ghost, diluted blood spun its bright red and irritably cheerful way down the plughole. I gave her lots of paper toweling to shore up the blood. But when her colleague eventually arrived back - from the bank apparently - there wasn't a great deal of love lost, I noticed, and even less sympathy. I did what I could to patch up the enmity, as well as the wound, and proceeded to have my hair, as well as my faith, 'repaired'. An auspicious start to the day, I thought. It didn't end there, either. I caught a train into the centre. As it drawled into its final destination, I saw a woman at the end of the platform. She was standing there perfectly still with a large hand-painted sign emblazoned in red with the word 'FORGIVE' . I disembarked, baffled and bemused, and walked silently through the crowds. I was almost ready for anything now. As it happened, there was a film premier being set up and large banners with the faces of the stars staring down. Now, it just so happened that I knew one of the people in the film before they were famous and I think I half-expected to bump into them, given the sort of strange day I was having. Added to which was the fact the film was set many years ago in the war zone when indeed I was briefly there, too. Just as I was looking up at this person's giant reproduced face, I slammed into someone by mistake. It was like a thump. It couldn't be, could it? No. Instead of it being one of the biggest movie stars of recent times, it was in fact a friendly-faced tramp in a worn and patched tweed jacket with an ancient rucksack on his back. 'I do apologise,' he said, most courteously. 'No,' I said. 'I apologise.' And with that we bowed and bade each other good day. Now, I doubt they'll have had courtesy like that at the premier. Not when the paps are out and the scrums are ripe and the glitz is big and vulgar. Anyway, the artist was still working when I returned. 'How was it?' she asked, trying to get used to the haircut. 'Fine,' I said. 'I got your materials.'

Foreword

After several years of mothering, working, experimenting, thinking, positioning, surviving, tolerating, imagining, comparing, grooming, conceptualising, sighing, building, caring, bruising, bristling, drawing and driving forward, the artist is now ready to show a visually arresting build-up of a body of work, still gathering pace and substance, and sure of what it is. For years the artist has been working away like this - not so much in the background as away from the instant gratification of constant public feedback - and now it seems she is more than ready for the next step. A greater confidence in the work is apparent. Not just in terms of its execution but also in terms of the idea behind the execution. The work is as finely tuned now as anything done by the artist ever before, and it is more than refreshing to see an artist spend time developing a body of work, and not just intoxicated by the world of one-liner ideas executed by others which is so prevalent in the art world today. As mentioned, the artist is preparing for the visit of a gallery. She is feeling calm and unfussy. The concept is as sound as the need for a show is profound. Forward she goes.

Visiting Hours

She did the call. A few minutes after returning from arranging the framing of one of her pieces with a shy woman from the continental mainland, she nodded to me calmly and said now was the time. I had been waiting in myself to take a prearranged call, which came, from the war zone. I still had my own plans running through my head, which the artist took time to ask about, but now I was beginning to think of her again. She didn't waste any time. Suddenly she was sitting down on the bright red sofa with the phone in one hand, talking to the young and aspiring gallerist in the centre of the capital she had met only a few days before the festive period. The gallerist in the meantime had been on the dark continent and was reassuringly enraged about the injustices she had witnessed there. (Many in the art world these days seem devoid of humanism.) It was strange because while the artist was making the call, she was in exactly the same position as she was when I wrote about her last night. (It's not like she had the alternative of an east wing.) As daylight this time poured through the thin wooden shutters, and the children were experiencing their first day back at school, an almost executive tone was adopted by the artist, and after a brief but sincere exchange of pleasantries, a time and date was agreed. It is official. The gallerist will come and see the work in the flesh so-to-speak after three more sleeps, as the children say. It is all about the relationship right now and how they get on. The work, in my opinion, speaks for itself, though even that must earn and assume respect.

Making measurable progress in reasonable time

The image on the wall grows steelier by the day. The captured elements of pure earth today within the piece for example, like glimpses of peat almost, have come through the foliage most forcefully. Blades of weed, especially to the right of the piece, almost bend as you look. There is a steepness to the hill in which it is set that unsettles, and yet the togetherness, the unity of the piece, ultimately pulls you through. Perhaps it is the two figures, the children, the artist's children, holding on to each other. Also, wonderfully improbable though it is, the roots of a giant tree are above their heads. The roots. The thin trunk to the right, a visual jolt rather than a central theme, loves the light illuminating its bark. As I write all this, the artist sits before it, parked like she is in this sentence. She is finished for the day. Like this sentence. I believe she feels at home on the bright red sofa with a warm cup of peppermint tea. (I can see her profile against the soft white of the wall.) The children's voices drift from their room into this one. It is as if they are coming from the piece. A piece in which they so narratively feature. There is also something about what I call the desert light and lampshade by the fireplace in this room and the atmosphere coming from its crepuscular beam that takes one away from the trivia and trifles of life. Is it spiritual? I suppose it is. Ah, the children are silent for a moment - the piece on the wall too - but then I can hear their laughter again. You know, I love the fact they take it all in their stride that they feature in their mother's work. I wonder if they also know they are universal.

Leave to Work

Today was the first day I have seen the artist back at work in just under a fortnight. The artist hasn't even had a proper holiday: she has been sick all this time. Anyway, this hugely important return came about towards the end of the day, just before the sun went down, and it was all done very quickly and quietly. First of all, an unwanted section of the day's newspaper was opened and its pages spread evenly along the floorboards and across the skirting board. Some white gaffer tape was used to attach the pages of the newspaper to the wall, creating a kind of wide ski slope for the residues of the materials she was about to use to slide down to the parts of the pages flat against the floor. Then she slid a tall stool towards the piece and picked up a green shoe box of materials from her table and placed them like a small stringed instrument on the seat of the stool. Within seconds, and I mean seconds, she was a picture of concentration - as if something profound in our lives had been resumed and a sweet music was being plucked. (If a light went out when she stopped working, another had just come on.) Weirdly, even the room, stripped of its festive tree, began changing beneficially. The bookshelf where the tree had been for example was suddenly more accessible. The children were drawing and writing and not just playing with toys. And not once did I hear the artist cough as she leaned her chin towards the surface of her work and worked away at it with a kind of surgeon's skill. (For a second it was almost as if the long line of traffic through the trees outside also slowed down out of a kind of respect.) No, today is the first day of the weekend and the following day after next is when the artist will be phoning up the gallery to confirm a time and day to pay their visit. So no pressure there then.

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath*

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels like balloons.

* The title of the artist's last solo exhibition was taken from this poem. I won't say which.

The Artist's Parents

I wanted to sit down at the round red table this evening and interview the artist about what I know is the important influence her parents have had on her art and indeed life as an artist. For over 200 blogs now I have been deliberately avoiding this as a subject matter, out of a kind of shy respect I suspect, a sort of sideways glance, but I was thinking only this morning how now may be as good a time as any to approach this important strand to the artist's life. Anyway, as you can probably tell, the interview didn't happen. At least, not today. Meanwhile I have been in the centre of a very cold capital and the artist has been recovering at home, though not unsuccessfully I might add. I am also aware of the fact a possible visit from a gallerist may come next week and the artist must be recovered fully for this. As a result, she is relaxing for the first time today - the space where she normally works is immaculate because of cleaning - and I feel in no position to take away this precious rest. However, as someone who didn't know his own parents, I feel it's important to add that I have never resented those who do. Also, it is entirely in keeping with the artist's lack of pretentiousness that she not only embraces hers and acknowledges openly their general encouragement, but also that she has made them the subject of her work in the two large portraits mentioned on this site before. No, it is a very big deal, encouragement, and as a parent myself now I am only too aware of its power of invigoration. What I perhaps admire most with the artist and her parents is that while some would have tried to nudge their offspring away from a life so unpredictable and difficult as an artist's, this the artist's parents never did. Instead, I suspect, they watched their daughter's absolute determination and like me were so bowled over by it, so impressed, they simply bowed before it and now, I know, wish it the highest regard. They are just as encouraging to their two other talented offspring too. I tip my hat to them; I really do.

No, we shall not cease from exploration

Back home. Artist still coughing. Doctor. Infection in one lung. Antibiotics finally. Amoxicillin. Two children settle in. Shopping. Basics. Artist's work acknowledged by artist's husband on return from shops. Two pieces still on wall. Other pieces by wall clocked too. Situation normal, as left. Artist's materials on small table. The work ahead viewed like a shimmering prospect in the snow. It is as if everywhere still on holiday. I chomp at the bit. Artist lies in bed. Children refamiliarise. This year will be a good year for the artist. The purpose of the blog, namely the finding of a show, goes on. Patience difficult today. The starter's pistol fired but no one has begun race yet. To do so feels like cheating. Our son is sitting on floor beside me. He is making a day-glo pair of spectacles. His legs are straight but crossed at ankles and his concentration impressive. Our daughter is in bed with her mother, the artist. I reach for the John Ruskin book to my left. (Every time I hear the word revolution, I reach for my culture.) On Art and Life. When he writes about the soul of the Gothic, I am compelled to think of the artist. 1. Savageness. Well, not exactly in her work, though the interpretation may be wrong. 2. Changefulness. There may be one main theme in present work but it does shift like the seasons, or roll like an apple on a deck, and is at times also a love of change. 3. Naturalism. In this artist's work? I should co-co. The artist loves nature, enough to place her most precious being in the work. 4. Grotesqueness. Not anymore, though there is a whispered element of disturbed imagination in the corners of some work. 5. Rigidity. Well, there is a kind of deliberate rigidity in some of it too, a reflection of well worked principles, creative obstinacy. 6. Redundance. If by redundance the great John Ruskin really means generosity, then most certainly. Anyway, please get well soon, artist. I place the book back on the shelf. New people have moved into the flat above. I can hear their unfamiliar footsteps on the bare floorboards. We wish you well.

Esledes

Guiltily, we left the artist back at camp and decided to go on ahead and take the castle ourselves. Horseback was out of the question, which was a shame as it was good riding weather, but morale was not low and some of us had already read up for example on our Amboise, Falaise, Bamburgh and Ludlow castles - however we took this one it would be fine. A crow crowed. An already dead leaf fell. Our 4-year-old nephew and 5-year-old son went first. Trained from an early age in stealth and conquest, you imagined there were few challenges they would not be prepared to accept. You imagined correctly. After the Norman foundations, mediaeval gatehouse, and Tudor tower - though the older ones such as myself were confused - we were pretty soon sneaking through the peacocks and swans like petty thieves with high ideals. The artist's father filmed. The artist's mother held many hands. The artist's brother stared warily at a peahen: 'As long as there is a humour between me and them,' I thought he said most charmingly, when in fact he said: 'As long as there is a human between me and them.' Anyway, we reassembled by 2,400 small yew trees constituting the maze and eventually found ourselves again after much meandering and puzzlement in the grotto in the centre depicting the giant Typhoeus, father of Harpies. That's right, Harpies, not Herpes. All was well. We had remained undetected. Next stop was the aviary. As none of us could remember what it was exactly we were supposed to be conquering - the castle was across a moat and really for adults only - we allowed ourselves, foolishly perhaps, to be seduced instead by the Peruvian Thick-Knees - Thick-Knees, not Cockneys - in their cages. (They were saying something which in pure audio terms sounded like the artist's brother's wife's surrealist podcast about a barber shop recorded in 5.1 Surround.) We sneaked past to the tuft-headed Crowned Cranes and made it to the Toco Toucans, also. (I used to have a picture of one of them on my bedroom wall as a child and it was as if it had just come to life.) Just then, a loud cockatoo had me jump out of my skin and I fled. As I write this all down, the 5-year-old, who cannot sleep, is standing beside me with a broad however sleepless grin, and the artist is coughing much less. Perhaps this was the point of the exercise. Refortification again.