Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit

Today I have just helped the artist email a gallerist at a gallery where the artist has been invited to exhibit in a group show, though no dates have been confirmed and the art world is as fickle as a tampered barometer. The artist's plan is to explore the idea of a solo exhibition there too. The gallerist, a pleasant man with serious manners, has been shown a number of reproductions of the new work - plus slides and transparencies from previous exhibitions - and in an eccentric kind of way is impressed. But most of the artists he represents are abstract and this would be a departure for him. Anyway, the idea is to persuade him to visit where the artist works, her home basically, and this is never easy. Gallerists are like self-styled agoraphobics, even the nice ones. They never like to leave their galleries. Not unless there is a sale involved. Here it will be different, very. Beforehand, the artist will clear away all domestic and myth-sucking items such as the children's laundry, some toys, felt pens, their impressively competing sketchbooks, my jackets, and take the aforementioned gallerist on a kind of whirling tour around a room emptied of people, as the debris and energy of the artist's mothering manages to chime with the courage of her art and all the while the work leans against the walls in a large circle. The side of the room with the fireplace for example can be the east wing and the area behind leading into the kitchen the west. I will be hiding, a million miles away. I am not asked to hide but hate with confidence the idea of being the overbearing figure at the shoulder of a prospective ally. (More exciting I hide in the wardrobe, no?) No, it wouldn't work and I actively discourage it. Better not get too big for my blog, either.