The Dinner Party

We had the pleasure of some well bonded new friends around for a supper of roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, peas, beans and horseradish sauce this evening. There were thirty-five or so candles awaiting them, each flickering with contentment as they entered the flat from the cold. Our friends have a daughter only slightly older than our own - they attend the same school - and soon the two girls wandered down the corridors of an imagined adulthood, musing on the particulars of their adult world, while our 5-year-old son squatted like a rebel by a mountain of cushions, looking sharp as a needle on a tree in his aunty-designed peach-red pirate shirt. Aside from the genuine pleasantries and compassionate vibes flying around the room, what was of particular interest to me was the artist showing her work. Both parents are teachers as well as artists and it was welcomed by the artist therefore to have the chance to receive some in-depth analysis, especially when you remember that pretty soon after the upcoming festive period has ended, there will emerge through the last remaining cooking fumes of excess a gallerist of young but high repute coming to see the work. I remained pretty much silent throughout the viewing session and always enjoy listening to other people's takes on the artist's work. It is especially good when people look at the work without any need for biography. In other words, when the work is simply taken for what it is, and it withstands what I will clumsily call critical prurience, it is then that you know the work is as good to others as it is to yourself. So, from that point of view at least, it was good to see the work out from its temporary sanctuary by the door, allowed to breathe within people's eyeshot again in other words. It remains true that the more I see this work, the more convinced I am of its merit and worth. Why, it may even be good enough to give these very light words true weight one day.