The Art of the Matter

The Art of the Matter – beautifully illustrated, and almost tactile in its language – is centred around the idea that art is where we go to discover the things we don’t yet know. As well as its attention to painting, it also engages with the art of managing grief. It offers the reader a way of looking at endurance, both in terms of resilience and everlastingness. Art prompts a kind of expansion in the chest: we become more human, more curious, more alive when we are in the presence of a really great painting. Focusing on the relationship with her painter father, Claire Steele considers his works as posthumous conversations – dynamic, ongoing and full of mysterious surprises. Via a collection of meditative reflections on art, loss, landscape, home and belonging, she explores what it was like to be the child of an artist, and how to retrieve a sense of him from attention to his paintings.