Ever fresh and fresh

Let me describe to you the living room. I have mentioned it in many ways many times before but I have usually been physically accompanied in the room when writing about it. This time there is no one around: nobody. It is a million miles from the war zone and all I can hear is the washing machine. The artist has disappeared to pick up the children from school and take them to a friend's house. I have just returned from our closest supermarket with some food. (As the artist is going out with her sister tonight, I thought it a good idea to cook something special for the children, something they like, as they will inevitably miss their mother and need consolation.) Anyway, the living room. A dozen or so newspaper pages are spread out across the silent floor by one of what are now three art pieces screwed to the wall, two of which are works-in-progress and one not quite sure if it is finished or not. It is very much a working scene. An open-cast mine. The artist's materials sit like spices in the boxes on a table to my right. The small turquoise blue plastic stool, upon which she stands in her clogs to reach the higher parts of whatever the piece she is working on, stands alone in the middle of the room. It is like some curious item from a model of a TV studio. Next to the stool stands our son's intricate and treasured pirate ship and next to that is the bright red sofa. It is all so still - everything - it is as if Mary Celeste was an artist and not a ship. Also, there are no electric lights switched on in the room, the window blinds are open, and the afternoon light pouring in gives the faintly smudged white walls an air of omniscient credibility. Furthermore, at the far end of the wall is a smaller work of art and this is covered entirely in newspaper, with the paper taped to the wall. This is in fact a portrait of the daughter of the sister the artist is going out with tonight and who will be staying with us later. No, there is something fascinating and slightly loaded about an image covered and hanging on the wall. While I have the advantage of seeing its progress daily, I am sure it is even more exciting having seen nothing of it at all. Memories of unopened presents as a child spring to mind, adolescent unbuttonings, the breaking of the spine of an exciting new book. That's it, isn't it? Art is at its best when served fresh and if it is great it will always be fresh. Meanwhile the cars and heavy vehicles muffled only slightly by the line of trees between here and the busy road continue past the window. Bills and books and bluetack sit on the table beside me. Life goes on like traffic and one by one our destinations are reached. Here in this room is no roadblock.

You can't wake a person who is pretending to sleep

The artist turns the volume down on the TV in the corner of the room and walks deliberately slowly to where the children should be sleeping, only they are not sleeping because they are in our bed and think this all very funny. The artist continues however at a deliberately slow pace, trying as she approaches the bed to induce in their still budding minds a sense of 'sleepfulness'. As she stands by the door – I make it sound more grand than it is - she turns the light down, only slightly, and lies on the bed beside them, because they have asked her to. There are now one or two giggles rising like little eruptions from their mouths as they try to come to terms with the fact they've just won the How To Get Mummy Into The Bedroom With Us While We Pretend To Sleep game. The laughter continues and I take this opportunity to examine the artist's work done today. It is like reading a fresh newspaper. It is full of information. The artist has worked on the contrast. Even in the half-light it pops out at you and readily convinces. The medium assists greatly with this dimensionalisation - if one can use such a phrase. I also like the live and dead nature, as if the dead somehow is still living. Something I remember as a child when puffins would dive into the sea and break their necks when the wrong wave came along, and float on their backs dead but with these beautiful multi-coloured beaks screaming out, ‘I’m alive! I’m alive! Look at the colours of my beak! I’m alive!’ I place an ear towards the room where the children are still pretending. It is very quiet. Either they are deeply convincing or really are asleep. Hang on, I know. It’s happened before. I know what it is. The artist has fallen asleep. (Unfortunately I am wrong: fifteen minutes later, the artist is back drawing at the table and the daughter still awake.) The work on the table is different to the work on the wall. It is tiny. The need to get our dear daughter to sleep however grows vast.