The trees are red…

This morning, over unexpected waffles and unexpectedly being in my department’s tea room, someone mentioned that all the trees in one of my town’s main streets had been wrapped in red cloth. Somebody mentioned that it was the doing of landscape artist Strijdom van der Merwe – which rang a bell – and I subsequently decided to go and have a look. I forgot, and was later,during random wanderous shopping, reminded. So I went.

 

I drove my little red car along the street that I’ve driven it along countless times. It looked pretty damn cool. But while I was driving, I started feeling sad. Sad in that almost-wanting-to-cry-but-not-quite-having-wet-cheeks kind of way. Why? I was asking myself whist driving. I came up with a combination of missing wanting to be somebody else, not really needing to impress anybody with being cool, somebody that i don’t know who died unexpectedly, the dirtyness of my flat, missing a winetour on Saturday and the rainy time that is up ahead. And on the way back along the street, I found myself wondering whether that is not what realty makes it art and not just some sort of urban decoration – the ability to go beyond looking cool and to actually affect people in some way or another. The medium gives the piece instant exposure -and the ability to touch non-artgoers; the people who don’t read books or go to galleries on seek these things in other places. Which perhaps REALLY makes it art.

 

Which makes me wish a little bit that I was an artist and not a chemist…