A group show in a city church.
Nothing religious,
but selections from an evening class
occupying otherwise vacant space:
only a tomb here, an extravagant memorial there.

These are 'advanced' painters,
and decoding their statements,
examining their work,
it's possible to imagine daily lives
where art lives in the spare room.

Lewis paints you know.
After Laura died, and with the children distant,
he did this course in Norfolk - oils I think.
That large landscape in the sitting room is his,
all sky and salt marsh.

Jayne is studying the disorder of ******* dumps,
the contents of skips, what's left after a fire.
Her photographs she prints herself you know.
She says she loves to control the image,
chemically, and you can tell.

And more and others,
their 'work' holding stories,
other worlds of imagination and
depths of looking;
the silent collecting of things,
photograph after photograph,
the tidy sketchbook
(with last week's life class experiments).
And yet and yet

at the group show the finished pieces glow
in this badly-lit corner of a city church
where few visitors venture - but you must see this.
It's good, arresting in conviction and purpose.
This is art without artifice, reticent with meaning,
intense with intention, good, affecting, good
well-chosen tutor-curated;
good enough to come back to.

Consoling? Yes, consoling.
I needed consoling.
It consoled me.
I was consoled.