Travel Book 2

 

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.