Is art this is art

A friend of mine and her husband had a very arty farty gathering at her house on Saturday. A few weeks ago she sent me a text asking whether I would be free to come to the evening's festivities, adding:

"After a daft experience at an art gallery opening in Amsterdam, I am planning a bit of nonsense where everyone brings a piece of art they've made and then we sell them to each other (pocket money prices) and donate to charity."

What a brilliant idea! Or not, as the case may be. Back in the day when I had my marketing business, we all decided we'd adorn the walls of our board room with paintings that we ourselves had painted. It was supposed to be a fun team building exercise but, very quickly, we damned the moment we ever came up with the idea.

I won't speak for everyone's efforts, but mine was certainly attrocious. I can't even paint a living room wall properly, never mind a piece of art. I'm fine with concepts - and I had a really great one in my head - but getting it down on canvas was er... problematic for me. So much so, it was never shown to anyone. In the end I ditched the whole concept completely, I painted over it with a nice (but a bit bland) pastel abstract, which used emulsion instead of acrylic or (god forbid) oils. The fact that it was painted with emulsion I still claim is the most arty thing about it. It certainly was not the image, which was simply rectangular shapes overlapping each other. An art critic would have fallen asleep before they could muster a single word to say about it.

Anyway, for Saturday night's soiree, I decided I would refrain from using a paint brush, instead opting for something I flung together in Paint Shop Pro. This is, er... an artist's impression of the actual art.

This is art, indeed. [And, indeed, is it really?] And what is art exactly? Is art this? Before the event, I described the piece as being "simple and yet profound" and hinted that I expected it to go for a high price, all the while worrying that it was so rubbish it might not fetch so much as 50p. [Which would have been a disaster since the frames cost me 8 whole pounds!]

Actually, in the end my art sold for £14. I was pretty impressed, particularly since earlier in the evening I'd snagged an abstract painting (created with real paint and a real paintbrush and everything) for £2. Actually, what was really amazing about the night is how creative everyone had been. Someone brought a fabulous paper mache sculpture. Someone else had made a puppet made from an old curtain and some lentils (not kidding). One of the pictures was of an origami dinosaur, made from an Asda turkish delight chocolate bar (also not kidding). I also ended up buying a beautiful chalk drawing of a stag on a cliff top staring up at the aurora borealis for £15.52. It's really quite something, actually.

And the whole night was a success financially, raising nearly £130 for cancer research.