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.