We are house-sitting for a friend while our building work is done, adrift in her beautiful home overlooking the park, so beautiful that she commissioned a local artist to do a watercolour of it. Hung in the hallway, every time I go past I've admired the snowy scene with its tiny figures bowling down the hill on their toboggans. It looks typically Bristolian and reassuringly familiar.
However, strolling back to Number 20 through the park the other day, I glanced up from the spot where the artist must have stood to see the view as she had seen it, but something was wrong. The large conifer, which was palpably standing before me partly obscuring the house, is missing from the picture. Artistic license to flatter the commissioners? Its omission lent perfection to the composition and at the same time robbed the picture of truth. For any kind of artist, visual or verbal, this is a difficult call. Part of the creative process is to stamp your own vision on your subject, and this may involve refracting reality to some degree. I think it's probably OK to do this is if you are trying to make a comment about the situation you're describing, or if you are slightly altering an experience in order to blur the origins of it - protecting your sources, if you like - but to do it simply for expediency?? I'm not so sure...
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