Beside yourself

I watch the small fingers contorted over the paper, the hard black pencil sharpened, the rustle of paper, the hair a shield from everything else, the pauperish but longstanding wedding ring, the knuckles hardened by industry, the cardigan tightly buttoned, the aura of contented and emotionally self-reliant activity. I've been lucky enough to watch a number of artists work. To remember but a few, there was the boy at school whose pen leaked like an engine and whose characters gesticulated across the paper like wannabe Shakespearian actors. There were the Iranian twins beside whom I stood and watched a formidable way with women as well as paper and how a month or so before the revolution they drew like sad young prophets. There was the gallant Mexican from Saltillo falsely imprisoned because his girlfriend's father didn't approve of his daughter's triste with an artist and whose entire world was turned into a comic-drawn reality. There was the sex-change daughter of a baptist minister helping set up an installation who always smiled when you tried to disturb her. There was the southern belle who worked twice as hard as any man and three times as well as most. There was the tall Englishman with perfect teeth and miles to go before he slept. There was the Argentinian, the Austrian, the famous Portuguese woman, the female twin, the Brazilian, the Canadian, who never knew he was an artist: I have watched a few, I have been a witness. I have seen their habits, tics, and idiosyncratic manoeuvres. On a good day, watching an artist work is like watching a river flow. On a bad day, it's like watching watching watching. But watching this one, the one a few feet away from me now at the table, the one presently scratching her shoulder, is like watching your child who is your parent giving birth to herself.