The Interim Between The Glances

It is strange how differently something will look if you do not look at it for a while. This is certainly the case with the artist's work when she has been crafting and working on a piece for weeks - if not months - and you have the habit of looking at it every day and then suddenly - boom - it is finished and you kind of deliberately ignore it, put it in your mind to one side, and a few days later - taking a long and deep breath - you look at it again. It is like a preliminary test of time. A gauge of early greatness. A frank appraisal. In the artist's case, you realise immediately the intensity of the work and are reminded of why it was you liked the work in the first place. You gaze at the trawled tension and detailed line - and resultant beauty - and come away from it both informed and - when it's really good - uncannily fulfilled. I had one such reward this afternoon when I switched on the light to help a pregnant friend of ours examine the artist's new piece - which was still on the wall - more closely. (She stepped back from it in a kind of swollen awe.) This deliberate avoidance on my part of not looking at the work for a number of days is indulgent but it is also interesting on another level - it is as if in the interim between the glances a kind of visual fermentation has been taking place. There are one or two other pieces by the artist scattered around the house and they arouse something similar. They are still slowly maturing each day, as the sun comes up and the sun goes down, and include a small portrait of an elderly and gaunt stranger - I may have mentioned him before. This piece the artist recently took out again from behind the dressing table in the bedroom and because it was still poking out afterwards, I was able to take a look at it again. It most definitely had fermented, matured, grown. It had stood the test of time. It deserved its early greatness. It had endured frank appraisal. In a way, some of the pieces now are like flowered genius.