Frans Hals

Frans Hals (1580-1666) was a Dutch Painter. One of the masters of the 17th century, he is known for his brilliant single and group portraits. Hals excelled in portraying people in a happy mood. His paintings reflect the robust vitality of the prosperous Dutch middle class.

“The Laughing Cavalier” and “Balthasar Coymans” show his use of broad quick brush strokes to catch a momentary gesture and a fleeting expression. The naturalness and gaiety of “Banquets of the officers of Cloveniers-Doelen in Haarlem” are characteristic of much of his work. Hals used bright and vigorous colors in his early works. As he grew older he used more subdued and silvery tones. Many critics consider “Regents of the Old Men’s Home”, painted a few years before he died, to be his greatest work. Hals was born in Antwerp, but moved with his parents to Haarlem when still a child. Although Hals was a popular painter, he often had difficulty making a living. In his later years he was given a small pension by the City of Haarlem.

Water Colour Painting

 

Village - Oil Pastel drawing

 

Portrait of the Sea - Digital

 

Sri Lanka - Oil Pastel and Water Colour

 

Pen on paper

 

It is better to have drawn and lost than never to have drawn at all - Pen Drawing

 

The Magic of Art

 

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. Unfortunately there is no such theory, for some reason some paintings are pleasing while others fail to satisfy the mind. For many years I believed that composition was the most important element in a painting, later I felt color was equally important.

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 am one one 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 ugliness mingled cleverly with a really impressive element. The impressive element makes the painting realistic while the ugliness energizes the painting making the whole painting interesting. I used this theory to paint and came up with some eerie paintings. Of course not everyone was impressed some people called some of my buildings childish, others called them crude. But the important thing was for the first time in many years I felt like painting again.

The Endless Calamity of People - Pen Drawing

 

Factories - Pen Drawing

 

Houses - Pen Drawing

 

Trees and Houses - Pen Drawing

 

Tree - Pen Drawing

 

The Kelani River - Short Story

 

The idea came to me after seeing Vincent van Gogh's "Stars over the River Rhone". I once printed a "magazine" for fun with my home computer called "Astounding Magazine" and in it, this image appears. It shows stars shining over the River Rhone, with the lights of the city reflecting in the river and two figures in the foreground. As far as I was concerned this painting was the most spectacular painting ever painted, and yet there seemed to be for the most part variations of just two colours - Blue and Yellow. This for me was much better than van Gogh's more famous night paintings like "Cafe Terrace at Night" and "The Starry Night". For me this painting explored areas of the human soul that we only see (and forget) when we dream at night. So I wanted to draw a similar Dream without in any way copying van Gogh's painting.

And so, many years ago I decided to stay in the garden at night and paint the Kelani River till morning. The night was infinitely dark and strange, it seemed that everyone had gone to bed, and switched off all the lights. The road was deserted except for a lone cow and the yellowish light of the distant lamp post in the junction showed that the cow was half asleep, but even that was not clear for cows always look like that. A blue-green firefly, very rare for this part of the country flew and disappeared behind a leaf, which made me aware of the garden.

Overhead there were many strange stars. There was a particularly bright reddish star that didn’t twinkle. Could it be Mars, the one they called the red planet, unfortunately, I could not be certain. Then there was another bright star which for some reason I felt was Venus. Unfortunately my knowledge of astronomy, like so much else was incomplete. But it was ok, for didn't Newton himself say: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." All these thoughts made me tired that I sat down in the garden and couldn’t remember anything after that except the ground felt hard on my head, an annoying cricket made an annoying noise, the smell of grass and once I imagined that the cow was in the garden.

The hoot of an alarm made me jump, and for a moment I was horrified to find that I was not in bed but outside at night. I went to the gate to see what made that noise, and found that it was the siren for the midnight shift of a factory. Then I looked up, god how things had changed. Now it was around two in the morning and the stars were brighter than ever. I couldn't see the Great Bear the only constellation I knew apart from Orion, but I could see a group of prominent stars that curled down and formed what looked exactly like a tail. I wondered whether this was the Scorpio constellation and I still do. And then I felt so energetic that I took a canvas and started to paint and the result was the Acrylic painting I have posted below, along with the "Stars over the River Rhone" painting that inspired it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet. His essays had a strong influence on both sides of the Atlantic toward directing readers and writers to study man's relation to life and social aims. In "Self Reliance" he stresses the importance of sturdy independence in thought and action. "Trust Thyself" he counsels. "Envy is ignorance.....imitation is suicide." Emerson believed in an "Over-Soul" or divine force, that supplies man with revelations of truth and beauty.

The core of Emerson's philosophy was Transcendentalism. His essays are memorable for the many epigrams they contain. Emerson's best poetry is also epigrammatic. His simple, vigorous style inspired other rebels against stale conventions, notably Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. He was a popular lecturer. Though keenly interested in the cause of abolition of slavery and such social experiments as Brook Farm, he was more an observer than an active participant.

Emerson called for an American culture less dependent upon European patterns, and urged upon the scholar these mottoes: "Know Thyself" and "Study Nature." In an address to the senior class of the Harvard Divinity School in 1938 he advised young clergymen to rely more upon intuition than rigid dogma. Some faculty members attacked Emerson as an atheist, and it was 30 years before he was again asked to talk at Harvard.

Though he continued to lecture and write, his creative powers began to fade away after the Civil War. In 1871 friends took Emerson on a trip to California in a private Pullman car. After his return, his mind became increasingly erratic. At Longfellow's funeral in March 1882, he recognized his friend's face but could not recall his name. Emerson died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He was buried in Concord.

In "The Definition of Success", he states the following:

To laugh often and much

to win the respect of intelligent people

and affection of children; to earn the

appreciation of honest critics and

endure the betrayal of false friends;

to appreciate beauty, to find the best

in others; to leave the world a bit

better, whether by a healthy child

a garden patch or redeemed

social condition; to know even

one life has breathed easier because

you have lived. This is to have

succeeded.

Trees - Oil Pastel

 

Oil Pastel - Drawing

Walter Scott

 

Sir Walter Scott, (1771-1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, historian and critic. He was for many years one of the most widely read authors in Europe and America. His stirring tales of adventure brought to life for millions of readers the history of Scotland and England from the 12th through the 18th century. “The Lady of the Lake” (1810), a story of the Scottish Highlands in the 16th century, was the most popular of Scott’s narrative poems, and has been the most often reprinted. Critics consider “The Heart of Midlothian (1818), a novel set in 18th century Scotland and England, the best of all Scott’s works.

Scott’s popularity rested largely upon his descriptions of scenes and manners unfamiliar to his readers, and upon lively action and romantic episodes. He did not plot carefully, and wrote hastily and without revising. As a result, his novels and narrative poems lack unity and forcefulness. Most of his heroes and heroines are unrealistic, and their speech is stilted and trite. Except for some of the short lyrics incorporated in his narrative poems, his verse is second rate.

Scott’s importance is based on several valuable contributions to literary development. He created the historical novel and gave prestige to the novel in general. Among writers he influenced were Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Dumas the Elder, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and James Fenimore Cooper. Scott was the first novelist to present people of the lower classes as real human beings rather than as comic or sentimentally idealized figures. He was also the first novelist to use regional dialects in a serious instead of a mocking manner.

Sea and Beach - Oil Pastel

 

Landscape bathed in Moonlight - Watercolor

 

Oil Pastel

 

Houses by the Canal - Rough drawing with oil pastel