Chocolate Melts and Befriended Viewers

Crouched on the wooden floorboards last night like the Little Mermaid statue, the artist laboured until two in the morning preparing her new piece. She was doing this only in order for me to be given sufficient time to put the piece up for her to work on before I disappear on my pre-journey journey first thing tomorrow morning. (I am crossing a short stretch of sea and back.) This of course is typical of her. It was late in the night, very, she was tired, very, but she knew it was something she had to do, and so she did it. In an age where publicly funded artist millionaires complain regularly about the lack of public funding, it is always refreshing to see an artist determined to walk the true road to art alone. It is difficult, however, to remain totally concentrated on the artist and her work at the moment. This is because I am probably without sufficient time to do everything I need to do myself. In a way it may even be fortunate the artist and children will be with their grandparents soon, as that way I will know they are safe and well at the same time as being able to be a little bit more selfish about my own preparations. I still have a host of people to see as well as technological corners to turn. Since writing that last sentence, mind, I have managed to get the board up on the wall. As far as the technology is concerned, the test I did the other day did exceed my expectations. And as a particularly cherishable piece of chocolate melts in my mouth, and the artist snaps herself another on the sofa, I do feel more relaxed than I have all day. Also, I am settled in my mind that the artist is correct in going for another piece rather than concentrating all her efforts on getting galleries to visit. Besides, she will be able to get her teeth into the new piece big time while I am away. Art is companionship as well as expression and what one day may befriend the artist may another day befriend the viewer.

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.