so, the second kid-free friday went according to plan. dropped her off at playschool just in time for morning tea. in the midst of quiet munching children, there was a place set at the table for her, a bowl containing a slice of apple and a slice of orange. she was hesitant and shy and nervous, but the magnetic pull of the fruit was too strong.

i walked into the city, and on to surry hills, to the ray hughes gallery, where the most amazing show by lucy culliton, “domestic science“, is on for another week or so, so hurry! hurry over to see it.

it’s a hundred and sixty-five paintings and drawings of the best cakes, preserves, decorated arrowroot biscuits, knitted dolls, coat hanger covers, stuff at a regional show, all painted with love and gusto, candy colours, dabs of paint so high off the board you want to lick it. well, i did anyway. i mean, i did want to. lucy culliton is probably my favourite contemporary australian painter, and not just because she paints glorious buckets of hot chips and sauce, or trays of fairy cakes; her series of cactuses is as gorgeous as the rest. i had come to the gallery with a secret mission: i wanted to buy one of the paintings for myself.

because how much higher will her star rise? and how affordable will a painting be at the next show? and how much do her paintings fill me with joy?

plenty. i walked through the exhibition once, and again, and i saw how many red spots were on the main wall already: the lamingtons had been sold, and the festive iced cake covered in sprinkles. i tried to imagine that one of the remaining cakes could be mine: a second-prize orange cake; a doily covered in pink-iced cupcakes; a cream-and-jam-filled victoria sponge (truly the most lickable of the lot). i paced the wall for half an hour. i had to leave, and i walked down the street to the bourke street bakery, where i sat on an orange milk crate on the sidewalk, and meditated over a pork and fennel sausage roll and a belgian hot chocolate. it fortified me.

when i returned to the ray hughes gallery, ray hughes — who had earlier seen me with my nose mere centimetres away from a chocolate cake — smiled and gestured at the woman in bluejeans and cowboy shirt sitting opposite him, beneath the wall of plenty. “this is lucy,” he said.

and what i said was, “i think that one of these paintings is mine, but i don’t know which one yet.” and then, because she looked quite mystified, i said, “i think that i am going to buy one; i just haven’t worked out which one.”

because she does not know me, she asked, “cake or knitting?”, and she was friendly and kind and above all, unprecious, and told me about the names she had written on the winners’ certificates — emmylou harris had won for the pink-iced cupcakes, and how she had visited a dozen or so regional shows and distilled the best into this fictional, best-of-the-best lithgow agricultural society show, (and how lithgow wasn’t actually the hotbed of homecraft that she’d conjured up), and how she’d been a graphic designer a long time ago and gotten tired of the routine and gone to art school and would never go back to moving type about a page…

and i paced back and forth some more, and at times she would take this piece or the other off the wall and bring it into the sunlight, so that i could see just how luminous the cream filling in the victoria sponge really was, and how supple the red jam. and i wandered into the back room for respite, this little room filled with lively and understanding portraits of barnyard animals and exotic parrots; lucy’s friend rachel fairfax had accompanied her to all the country shows, and had documented the animals as lucy studied the food and craft.

and when i slunk back to the wall for maybe the fourth or fifth time, she laughed, not unkindly. i told her i’d narrowed it down to two: the pink cupcakes on the doily, and the resplendant packet butter cake, which showed me something more to love every time i came back to it. she put them side-by-side on a bench, and then it was clear.

we shook on it, and she placed a red dot next to #81. my first piece of art! i felt pretty great.

and then i got home, and minutes later my print rep called to let me know that the proofs of the book were online for approval. we signed off on them just after 4pm. and then i felt extremely great.

i think though, that i will have to go back to the show, to see it all again without that spectre of needing to buy something gnawing a hole in my belly. bring on kid-free day the third!