Tomorrow, I shall be 63. (It's a bit late, but presents - never mind the pesky cards - can be sent all the way until Christmas, at which point just put a robin and a bit of holly on them, it doesn't matter to me. Cigars, brandy, you know the sort of thing.) But, stricken though I be in years, I do try to keep an open mind - Bertrand Russell, who managed 98, advised that this was the best way to avoid becoming crabbed, senile, and a thorough pain in the bottom, although he phrased this advice somewhat differently. So I try to see the good, the interesting, the potential, in everything. Perhaps this is why I've been drawn to the "scribbles" or "doodles", as some would have it, of Bushniki Farfel. Perhaps his extraordinary name helped as well, plus his habit of titling his works by apparently random strokes on the computer keyboard. I've been slightly disturbed by the hostility in reactions to him - I don't think I'd want to buy his paintings; but his drawings - well, they're another matter. If I were in the habit of buying art - I'm not, since I produce more than enough of my own and am stuck with a large amount of it - I think I probably would: I can see a line of his drawings, mounted and framed, on my wall: if I had room, and the space in which to show them off. Now - why can't others? Why the anger that I see displayed towards him? I know absolutely nothing about this artist - but at least I'm prepared to admit that he IS an artist. I can see things in his work - and it may well be that I put those things there myself, but - why not? He's still given me the opportunity - offered a work that I can interpret as I wish. As I suspect anyone who's looked at my work knows, I do my best to paint what lies before me, interpreting it in various ways but still remaining as true as I can to the form and shape I see; in that respect, I'm conservative, and reasonably happy to remain that way. But I can still appreciate entirely different ways of looking at the world, while respecting traditional forms: I don't know that Bushniki Farfel (wouldn't you just die, by the way, for a name like that?) is a great or even good artist - I don't concern myself about things like that, it's pointless; but then, I don't dismiss them either. But I don't really understand why he's attracted such opprobrium here, of all places. One of our number - a very, very capable artist - described his work as "an insult to our intelligence"; well - deep respect and all that, but I really profoundly disagree with that. The artist doesn't defend himself, perhaps because of the language problem so, gulp - this is my best effort on his behalf. Let us be honest here: we've seen some pretty poor work, and we've defended and praised it, to an extent I've found quite worrying, because it's devalued the praise offered to other and far better artists: I'm not going to name the painter, because she seems to have moved on and it would be unfair, but some of us went out of our way to lavish praise on frankly poor work, in sympathy with the significant physical problems of the painter who produced it. That may not have been honest - it may have been kind. I didn't, however, have much sympathy with it: because the work was on the whole ghastly. But the Farfel drawings are different - we're not prepared to extend any charity (which is fair enough) but we're also not prepared to take sufficient time to study them (which really just isn't fair at all). I wouldn't try to convert all of our colleagues to Farfelism, but - I do suggest people give it more of a chance than they seem to have done. Take a longer look - perhaps a MUCH longer look: it may well not be great art - but it's not dross, either. And so very few of us have given it more attention than a quick, dismissive glance.