Self portrait, to be stuck at Tooting Bec

I went to the BP Potrait Award exhibition after work today. I think I've been to this every year since I've lived in London. I'm not really an art lover. I just like that this exhibition's there, it runs for months, it's at a convenient location, it's free, it's one room with just enough paintings that you're neither bored of looking or left wanting more. I like that you can see the winning picture, and agree or disagree with the judges. And there's a 'Visitors Choice' prize, with a card to mark down your favourite, that's fun. Yes, I like this exhibition, it's an easy fix of amateur art appreciation.

So most years I've lived in London I've found a spare 20 minutes to enjoy this celebration of painted faces. One year I went with Alex, on an evening when we had a babysitter and didn't have a better plan. The gallery seemed unusually busy, and it was only when we noticed so many faces that looked like those staring from the canvas, next to the legend 'Self portrait' that we realised it was a special night with the artists in attendance to discuss their work with the public.

I didn't discuss anything. Just compared their painted faces with their real ones, and we went home after 20 minutes as usual.

I decided to visit the gallery today because I'm in a bit of a fug I suppose. You know, just stuff. Just a head playing tricks on me when it should know better. But when I tell it that it gets even fuggier. And no, I don't now what the fug I'm talking about either.

So I decided this fug might be lifted by looking at the painted faces of many people. I hoped I could find some sort of cure for self-obsession and introspection, and really rather pathetic 'me me me' nonsense that's suddenly, annoyingly, come upon me.

So I looked at the paintings. I'm not sure it helped my fugged up head get better, but I enjoyed looking at these pictures.

What to say? I noticed that few of the painted people were smiling, they looked thoughtful at best, and many looked sad. Most had a name listed on the card description beside them. Or else the artist's name and 'self portrait'. I admired the realism, or skill of the artist, or the emotion conveyed, or the style on show, but the thing that struck me most was that I didn't know these people, and couldn't however long I looked at them. Obviously you could speculate or assume about their lives, but there was no way of ever knowing what these people were thinking.

Well, I know that's obvious really. But it made the whole seem thing seem quite pointless, and it was quite a lonely feeling, to think we were all looking at faces of people we couldn't know, and considering them thoghtfully, without ever understanding if they were happy or sad, or what really mattered to them, whether they were madly in love, or merely wondering what to have for tea that day.

And I wondered if it was any more interesting to look around at the people visiting the gallery. Maybe in their real world, not painted, faces I would understand more about the world than in stylish, empty, portraits?

But of course I could learn little about any of them either. Any more than they could learn if they looked at this head in a fug woman, scribbling in a notebook, sitting on the bench of the gallery. They wouldn't look and know that I was trying to make sense of all this, and then scribbling the words, 'trying and failing.'