The Halves and Half-nots

It has been a day of three halves. A kind of mathematically impossible, yet cerebral, as well as emotional, ride.

1) I contacted an old friend yesterday who lives and works on a tropical island with what I quaintly imagine are windblown palm trees and low flying clouds and deep blue skies. (We went to school together in the chilly north.) I had written to him in order to alert him to someone else I knew, a painter, a successful one, and someone I have written about before on this site. I had just read that this painter was living and working on the island too and I thought they might benefit from each other's company. (I was also keen on finding a route to the painter for some advice.) Anyway, this morning I received a reply from my friend from school, stating that they were in fact the best of friends. They surf together. They play racquetball together. Their families know each other well. Indeed, they were all with each other only last night.

2) According to reports today, a prominent female artist has disappeared without trace in one of the major capitals of the continental mainland. She was from a third country, a large one, famous again for eliminating its opposition. Though there is no evidence of foul play, and her husband does admit his wife's disappearance remains a complete mystery, one or two experts already point to a conspiracy. They also point to the mysterious ransacking of the museum where she last exhibited, and to the many recent serious threats.

3) The 5-year-old filmmaker of this parish placed down his camera today and picked up a needle and thread. He proceeded to create a life-size figure. He made a man with hands and facial features, a bag, long octopus-like arms, knees like boils, clothes like a fashion king of grunge. He spent most of the day making this creature and while he would place it down every now and then, it was never for long. I have now just been told the aforementioned creation will be accompanying him to bed. He also wants to take him to the beautiful foothills where his grandparents live.

Diverse and ongoing.

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 Messenger Is Massage

Today the artist saw the woman and artist she shared a studio with all those years ago. I gather they were both apprehensive, or excited, about seeing each other again, but it must be said the artist came back looking revitalised, enervated, full of ambition, citing the galleries she now wanted to visit and openings she wished to attend. I always compare it to staring down a tunnel of time when you see an old friend again after a long period of time - in a flash, life speeds up, in the artist's case this time by as much as eight years. According to the artist, her old friend, who looked well apparently, knew exactly where the work was coming from, to use that well-worn genealogical sounding phrase so popular with the art world, and its tangential bloggers. Out of four especially close female artists, it transpires that only one has had children - the artist of this blog. Interesting. Anyway, the artist also has a visit on Thursday to a young gallerist in the capital, someone recommended by my friend the art database guru, all of which of course is like art to my eyes, music to my ears. When you work so long and hard in a kind of vacuum, which is to say a place without immediate gratification, as the artist has done, self-doubt always looms large, or lurks behind hope, like a meddler in the soul. That's it: it lurks. It waits until you are at peace with the world and then attacks you. No, as the friend is someone who has known the artist's work for longer than me, I was more than delighted to hear about the success of their meeting. I was also thrilled it was a serious one-to-one - a long, frank, and intellectual discussion about the work itself, in other words. Furthermore it was something done without me gazing irrelevantly into the conversation. I like not being there. If people ever ask what it's like being married to an artist, I sometimes state, perhaps too clumsily, that it's great to know there is a huge part of the artist's life that has nothing to do with me whatsoever, or at least to know there is a place that is the artist's place, the artist's expression, the artist's world. While the very existence of this blog may suggest otherwise, it is hugely important to me that I can keep a kind of melodic distance from the opera itself, especially when it comes to content. (The artist would have it no other way anyway.) I am merely the messenger, remember. But these are front row seats.