This painting by Willem de Kooning painted in 1955 sold for 300 million dollars in 2015. The only thing you can say about it is that the colors and the shapes and lines give it a direct, pleasant even happy look. But like most abstract paintings you are left wondering what it is all about. De Kooning was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands and came to the United States as a Castaway. He worked as a house painter, carpenter and many other things before becoming a painter. You get the feeling that he used the same large brushes used to paint houses when he did this painting.

 

This is another example of drawing directly using this medium rather than blending the colors with your thumb

 

In many peoples opinion oil pastel isn't a good medium, its kind of messy, and you can't get clear edges. But when drawing directly, rather than blending the colors you sometimes get an unusual effect.

 

From the Travel Memoir

Nuwara Eliya is actually two different cities, when the sun shines it’s one of the most pleasant and picturesque cities in the country. But on this cold, dark, damp evening near the Gregory Lake it was one of the most dismal places I have ever been to. Lake Gregory was once a Swampy Bog, but in 1873 British Governor Sir William Gregory decided to dam the Thalagala Lake that originated in the Piduruthalagala Mountains and this strange lake was born. People seemed to have come to this central gathering place near the lake in bad light to have fun. I decided to take a boat ride, in the distance I could see the once beautiful mountains that I had admired on an earlier visit, now seemed alarming and bleak at the same time. The boat ride was boring and monotonous, nothing much happens and the biggest thrill is at the end when the boat thuds into the rubber tires almost throwing you overboard. The next thing to do seemed to be a five kilometer bike ride in a track adjoining the lake and I decided to try it.  I found that I was the only person on this track. A cold dark lonely wind blew from the river to the track, what in God’s name was I doing here, and then mercifully I came to the end of the track. I had ridden 5 Kilometers but it seemed much more.  Just as I turned and started to ride back it started to rain heavily. I was soaked, there was a man walking in the distance, probably a park employee, when I asked him where I could find some shelter he showed me a distant tree. At the tree there were five Indians four men and a woman. They jabbered in their language and sometimes used English in between. From what I could gather one of them had a serious illness that meant he could possibly die if he got wet on a downpour like this. He also had depression. You could see the others trying desperately to cheer him up including telling Hindi jokes, talking to him like a chicken etc. The tree offered very little shelter so I decided to ride on. Then I returned the bike and decided to walk to town. Considering how many people visit it, you always get the feeling that Nuwara Eliya is an under-lit city. It really is very dark. Eventually I had walked near the outskirts of the city. The rain had stopped and the sky seemed clear and I looked up. God the stars from here were gorgeous. They were the brightest I had ever seen. It was unbelievable really. And I realized I liked Nuwara Eliya even when it was dark. 

Good old bad books

 

One day in a second-hand bookshop I had a strange idea. Why not read books that are old and obscure, books that never even came close to making it to the best-seller list and write about my strange experience. I knew that in the art world paintings that sell for millions of dollars aren't always the best paintings. Several factors are at play, including the artist's personality, connections, etc. I guess if the artist is really popular even crap could be sold at a high price. I believe there were many books out there that never became popular, but are still very good or even more interestingly very bad. My objective was to find them and read them. This mostly involved reading very old novels. This method led me sometimes to read some of the strangest books that had ever been written but they were interesting for this very reason. All best sellers read the same way, but bad books all sound different from each other. Some bad books are very funny and make you wonder what kind of person wrote them. But I did find some books that could be called gems though they never became popular. When a book becomes a best-seller and everyone reads it, it somehow loses its magic. For me, the whole second-hand book shop reading adventure was one of the most fulfilling things I had ever done. Maybe one day I could use this experience to write a book about the strange books I read, and the stranger lives of people who wrote them. However like most of my projects it never got off the ground, mainly because I did not have time to read. But a funny world awaits anyone who visits second-hand bookshops and reads randomly old novels or short stories or even non-fiction books that never really made it.

Unforgettable Artists

 Many years ago I read a book about a Sri Lankan artist named Tom Jones (Not his real name). The only way to describe Tom Jones paintings would be “Very Boring, bordering on uninspired". Almost all his paintings showed one or more coconut trees on a beach with the sea on the background, painted with different shades of a dull brown, hardly the kind of thing that would excite anyone. Sometimes an old fashioned figure would stand near the pensive coconut tree, sometimes a boat would float aimlessly in the distant sea, sometimes the moon or sun would look down moodily upon it all, as if wondering why this painting was done. The question that comes to any reasonable persons mind is why on Earth didn’t someone stop him from doing, thousands upon thousands of paintings with such colors, with such depressing draftsmanship. It was the kind of painting that could be used to put someone with a dull mind to sleep. But here was the thing, these paintings were incredibly haunting. Many years after viewing them they kind of remained in your mind, attached in a strange way to your nervous system. And I suddenly realized after about two decades that these were the most memorable paintings I’ve ever seen. 

It turns out that there is another painter in UK who paints the same dreary mundane things as Tom Jones named L.S. Lowry. Given below is a painting by Lowry. All his paintings seem to follow this style. 

The Dream that Flew Away

 

I once attempted to build wooden triplanes and biplanes and the first type of wood I stumbled on was Kumbuk wood. These were not toys but scale models less than ten inches long. I wasn’t an expert, I just read some really good books about woodworking bought some tools, and started making. Art is an incredibly enjoyable endeavor, but it is limited in some way because what you create is two-dimensional. Woodworking is three-dimensional, you can actually hold what you created in your hands, and in that sense, it is “real”.

Even the first plane didn’t look too bad, and by the fourth plane, I had almost perfected the technique. I painted the wings yellow and the fuselage sky blue with US markings, and it looked incredible. I felt I could sell it, I even took it near a shop to meet the owner, but turned back at the last minute. It was somehow too embarrassing to sell. The real problem that many people face is not making something good, but trying to sell, maybe it is a fear of rejection or shyness. But if they are employed by someone, who wants them to sell a product they will readily agree and walk a hundred miles to sell it.

I went home and decided to sell later after improving it further, but I never did. I told myself that I will increase the output by giving different parts to different people who used power tools and assembling it myself, but I was only lying to myself. As far as I am concerned there are only two kinds of people. Those who can sell things they create without embarrassment - are called entrepreneurs and the rest of us are called employees.

IF YOU MAKE A FRIEND OF TIME

If you make a friend of time

It wouldn't matter that you have no dime

For waves that break in the mangrove beach

Will pull your ship from that sinking reef

If the lighthouse is afar

And a misty fog blocks the North star

Follow the terns to the left

Or north or south whichever is best

A starfish near the beach

May swim away beyond your reach

But a crab that moves sideways

May even wish you better days

A seagull that you think is dull

May show you the way if you lose your hull

A whale that you feel is bland

May one day give you a helping hand

An oyster that pricks your feet

Could have a pearl on some distant beach

A raft that is blown to sea

Will reach the Island of Serendib

Watercolor

 

How it all Began

My paternal uncle, was once a world-famous scientist and inventor, but now nobody took him seriously. For all his brilliance if two words could be used to describe him they would be Extremely Eccentric. He had the strange habit of suddenly asking a physics question in the middle of a normal conversation and you were liable to be scolded if you did not give a satisfactory answer. For this reason some people including many of his former colleagues avoided him. Some said it was old age encroaching, some said it was an illness of the mind.

But apart from this eccentricity he was a kind and friendly man and as much as I avoided him I could not help feeling guilty so one day I went and met him. "Oh there you are at last, you numbskull, you have been avoiding me for one month" said he. "I had my exams, but it was all in vain for they asked questions from just the part of the syllabus that I avoided" said I. "Serves you right, now tell me how the Universe was created" said he. "Well according to the Big Bang theory it all started as an infinitely small primeval atom, and it expanded to form the stars, planets, galaxies and everything else in the universe. But what the theory does not explain is how the primeval atom came to be in the first place and what was there before that" said I

"That’s right, it doesn't explain it, but I found the answer for that too, though it is a secret and I don't want to tell it to you right now. But I have something interesting to show you look out of the window" said he. Outside was an enormous metal tower, and a field of what looked like huge batteries. "The world is facing an energy crisis, economies have fallen because of it and it is only going to get worse, but I solved that problem through this invention. Look what happens when I press this switch" said he. As he pressed the switch there was a crackling sound and within minutes dark clouds appeared over the tower. Soon it turned into a terrible thunderstorm. "You see Thomas this tower has a charge that attracts lightning, which leads to a chain reaction that causes thunderstorms" said he. Soon lightning discharged in the tower almost continuously making an ear splitting noise. "Cant you see what's happening Thomas, I am converting the static charge in the lightning into chemical energy in the field batteries which is then used to make an electric current that could be used by people” said he.

Two weeks later I returned and to my utter dismay he asked the same question, but this time I was prepared ......Well uncle, according to scientists when matter and anti-matter collide it leads to nothingness. So somewhere in the indeterminate past this process was somehow reversed and from nothingness we had matter and anti-matter, or in other words the universe formed from nothing. At this he laughed and said......just as I always suspected you are not overly bright.....but then we all have to be the way we are made.

But at least tell me what you know of the Theory of Relativity.

.......Well uncle according to it time is relative and not absolute. The faster you move the slower time passes for you. As you approach the speed of light Time stops” said I. “But what has the speed of light to do with time, you pinhead” said he. “I do not know though I have often wondered” said I. “No you idiot, Light and other electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light and even in a stationery object the small particles that make it move at the speed of light. But when the whole object moves the need to move is compensated so the small particles that make up the object move correspondingly slower making it look like time moves slower for it. But when I tell this theory to other scientists they call me a nut” said he.

“But uncle don’t worry about it, for your lightning machine will make you famous, nobody ever figured out the way to make electricity from lightning,” said I. My uncle’s face darkened as I said this and he said “That’s where the problem is Thomas, I can’t present my invention to the world for it would be misused. Imagine what a superpower could do if it got its hand on my invention. It could even be used as a weapon. I don't want my invention to be used to kill people, So I decided to destroy it, in fact I already have” said he. My uncle died two months later, I think of a broken heart because he had to destroy his precious invention. I do not know if his theory of the universe was correct but I know that he was the greatest scientist nobody ever talked about.

Oil pastel and black pen