Ever fresh and fresh

Let me describe to you the living room. I have mentioned it in many ways many times before but I have usually been physically accompanied in the room when writing about it. This time there is no one around: nobody. It is a million miles from the war zone and all I can hear is the washing machine. The artist has disappeared to pick up the children from school and take them to a friend's house. I have just returned from our closest supermarket with some food. (As the artist is going out with her sister tonight, I thought it a good idea to cook something special for the children, something they like, as they will inevitably miss their mother and need consolation.) Anyway, the living room. A dozen or so newspaper pages are spread out across the silent floor by one of what are now three art pieces screwed to the wall, two of which are works-in-progress and one not quite sure if it is finished or not. It is very much a working scene. An open-cast mine. The artist's materials sit like spices in the boxes on a table to my right. The small turquoise blue plastic stool, upon which she stands in her clogs to reach the higher parts of whatever the piece she is working on, stands alone in the middle of the room. It is like some curious item from a model of a TV studio. Next to the stool stands our son's intricate and treasured pirate ship and next to that is the bright red sofa. It is all so still - everything - it is as if Mary Celeste was an artist and not a ship. Also, there are no electric lights switched on in the room, the window blinds are open, and the afternoon light pouring in gives the faintly smudged white walls an air of omniscient credibility. Furthermore, at the far end of the wall is a smaller work of art and this is covered entirely in newspaper, with the paper taped to the wall. This is in fact a portrait of the daughter of the sister the artist is going out with tonight and who will be staying with us later. No, there is something fascinating and slightly loaded about an image covered and hanging on the wall. While I have the advantage of seeing its progress daily, I am sure it is even more exciting having seen nothing of it at all. Memories of unopened presents as a child spring to mind, adolescent unbuttonings, the breaking of the spine of an exciting new book. That's it, isn't it? Art is at its best when served fresh and if it is great it will always be fresh. Meanwhile the cars and heavy vehicles muffled only slightly by the line of trees between here and the busy road continue past the window. Bills and books and bluetack sit on the table beside me. Life goes on like traffic and one by one our destinations are reached. Here in this room is no roadblock.