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.