SAM VANGHELUWE PINXIT: I gaze at my loved one in a corner of the sky. (Zen koan)

Arrived 5:00 (sunrise 5:39). Despite forecast, no rain, little cloud cover, but a clammy and chilling southwestern breeze, stiffening. Humidity 87%. 15°C felt more like 12.

Setting moon, the replendent loved one in a corner of the sky.

Smaller container ships making their way to sea, meekly making way for yet another Chinese Collossus Container Tower headed for the port of Antwerp, stacked 8 high with more cheap cargo for the European consumer's cargo cult.

Saw a documentary yesterday about the 14 year old Norfolk prodigal boy painter, Keiron Williamson, worth 2 million pounds. He is a rather timid, ingratiating boy. Whatever he paints gets snapped up immediately, at up to 55.000 ponds a pop. All over the world, art investors are on the hunt for his work. So busy is he, that his parents (i.e. managers) have decided to have their son home-schooled. Keiron Williams is called the 'mini Monet', and has often been likened to 'an Old Master'.

The poor boy.
What he paints is no more interesting than what millions of amateur painters produce all over the world, on sunday afternoons. It is dutifully directed by prescribed technique, painfully informed by market demand (landscapes painted sur le motif are made saleable in his studio, by adding birds in flight, a human figure or two..), and most often, copied off photographs. Sentimental shots of country life, old fishermen, romantic sunsets, shire horses in sunny meadows. It is illustration, what Americans call 'art work'.

I have no qualms against amateur painters. That would be wrong: I myself am, officially, an amateur.
What unsettles me is the revelation that this is Art Today. What was once tolerated as somewhat vulgar dilletantism is now accepted as the Rule, the current paradigm. The thousands that are enamoured with this kind of painting, do proclaim their love proudly: the conventional 'avant-garde' is baffling and/or boring and pedantic. Here, at last, the public sees a kind of painting they can recognize, that isn't challenging in any way, comforting like a blanket. And best of all, the fact that the painter is a child, legitimates the overt passion diplayed, and implicitly, the deep disdain for true painting.

Poor boy. His managers worry about the admirers losing interest once the child prodigy becomes an adult, but it could get much worse. Imagine him discovering, a few years from now, that it was all an illusion.