From the Travelogue

 

Because I had gone to Nuwara Eliya in November, I found it was off-season and intensely cold. After tea I went to a hotel. The owner was inquisitive to know why I was traveling and I explained my philosophy of travel. I said I was traveling all around the country using only public transport and I wanted to draw or paint everything I came across. He looked at me like I was from another planet.

But the great train journey uphill had aroused my interest in Surrealism so I started to draw my first surrealist drawing. Surrealism is an odd thing. Everyone accepts that something illogical has no value, but the objective of this Surrealist movement is exactly this – to create unnerving, illogical scenes with the objective of freeing the unconscious. Nothing less. Amazed by what I saw in the hill country, I drew a landscape following the strange theories of the Surrealists. It was an enthralling experience. In an attempt to draw realistic and impressive drawings and avoid mistakes, the artist sometimes loses the thrill of drawing and painting...His output drops...But in this new Surrealist method I invented, mistakes are modified or left as they are to make the drawing more energetic. The artist finds the true purpose of art - to express oneself and be happy...I felt incredibly proud of my first Surrealist drawing, it really had freed, if not my unconscious, at least the full potential of my creativity. So I took my drawing to show the owner, and all he could say was, “What the hell is this?” Damned if I knew.

But that was nothing compared to my experiences in selling drawings. Many years ago, I came up with a novel way of drawing. For me Art has always been synonymous with magic, so one day I wondered whether there was some theory that, when applied, would lead to interesting paintings or drawings. Unfortunately there seemed to be no such theory, for some reason some paintings are pleasing while others fail to satisfy the mind. But I didn’t want to give up so easily. So I analyzed the paintings of famous artists and found that the most interesting paintings had an element of crudeness in them. Take Vincent van Gogh’s “The Church at Auvers” for example, the whole building is crooked and the colors unnatural. But what would have happened if he painted it straight using natural colors, then it would be like a million other architectural drawings, competent but boring. This was good news for me because I was one of those people in this world who is too lazy or too incompetent to draw buildings perfectly. I felt that the real secret behind a really good painting was a certain crudeness mingled cleverly with a really impressive element. The impressive element makes the painting realistic, while the crudeness energizes the painting or drawing making the whole painting interesting.

I used this theory to paint and came up with some eerie paintings. Part of my technique involved random squiggles, particularly for the sky, which I called energy lines. Apart from the energy they added they helped balance the composition which I think is crucial in any drawing. The next step was to find someone to sell it to. At that time, I was attending a tuition class to pass an exam, but the people there were not the kind who would buy a drawing. But there was a certain intelligent person who took the trouble to have creative conversations with me. She was much older than the others, and said she also had a law degree, and had an intellectual air to her, which made her an ideal candidate to sell my drawing to. So I talked about the subject and showed her the drawing, hoping to charge only a small amount because it was my first sale. She was immediately repulsed. She took the drawing and turned it sideways and then upside down and looked at me in a weird way that some people reserve for particularly stupid people. I was shocked, why I wondered was she turning it upside down, after all it was one of my best landscape drawings with energy lines for the sky. Then she said "I don't know whether it is upside down or not, but after framing it make sure you display it the wrong way to the wall. Life is a joke.