Vincent van Gogh

 

Many years ago, I was disappointed with where I was as a painter, it seemed I was going nowhere, horrible days lay ahead, and I decided to give up painting altogether and do something like hiking. Hiking was incredible but during those troubled times hiking seemed a useless thing to do. So I gave up hiking as a pleasant but unattainable pastime. I wondered what I could do until one day I saw the paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh seems to have been an oddity almost from the beginning. Childhood photos show him staring blankly at a distance, which was not a very promising start to begin with. As a child he was serious, quiet and thoughtful not the kind of thing that would get him anywhere good in the real world. After working unsuccessfully as an art dealer he became a missionary and drifted into solitude and ill health. Not only did he suffer from mental illness and poverty but he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. Perhaps in desperation that nothing else worked, he took up painting at the somewhat mature age of 27. What he created over the next ten years was astounding; 2100 artworks including 860 paintings. They were so good that they became some of the most recognizable works in the history of Western art. Unfortunately he became famous only after he died in poverty at the age of 37 by shooting himself having sold only two paintings. I was so inspired by his paintings that I decided to draw like him with oil pastel without in anyway copying him. Given below is my drawing together with the painting that inspired it.

Humphry Davy

 

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was a British Chemist. Davy discovered the elements potassium and sodium (1807), and barium and calcium (1808). These discoveries resulted from his researches in electro-chemistry. He was the first to isolate magnesium and strontium (1808) independently of the French chemist Gay-Lussac and Thenard. His miner’s safety lamp (1815) was a major contribution to industrial safety. Although two other men claimed this invention, Davy is generally given the credit.

Davy was born in Cornwall. As an apprentice to an apothecary and surgeon, he became interested in chemistry. In 1799 as an assistant in the Pneumatic Institution of Bristol, he made important discoveries of the properties of nitrous oxide. This accomplishment won him an appointment, at 23, as professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London.

Davy’s talent for storytelling, combined with his brilliant scientific record, made him one of the most popular lecturers of his day. Although Britain and France were enemies at this time, Davy was awarded the Napoleon Prize of the French Institute in 1808. He was knighted in 1812 and was made a baronet in 1818. He became president of the Royal Society in 1820.

As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends. Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. He wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.

From the Travel Book

 

But the tiresome train journey from Colombo had demotivated me from returning home by train again, so I wondered what I could do. Then I had one of the best ideas I had ever had while traveling: I would go mountain hopping by bus. So I traveled from Ella to Bandarawela and found that it took only about 45 minutes. After walking around in Bandarawela, I took the bus to Welimada and from there I took the bus to Nuwara Eliya. It was unbelievable how flexible and fast buses are compared to trains and the scenery was incredible. From there I went to Peradeniya.

The Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya is located near the Mahaweli River and is renowned for its collection of orchids. There were 4000 different species of plants here but I could only identify a dozen or so trees which was disappointing. Oh their name boards were displayed but for me they were meaningless. What I wanted was a deeper understanding. Though I was no good at it or maybe for this very reason, science has always fascinated me. I have an almost superstitious reverence for it. How in heavens did they send a rocket to Jupiter that revolved around the giant planet gaining enormous speed using the planet's own gravitational pull and was flung in a different direction to the furthest distances of space to study Neptune before leaving the solar system forever without even an astronaut aboard?

Getting back to trees, I’ve always been confused about the different types of plants. I knew vaguely a group called flowering plants, and a group that doesn’t flower like pines. But where do things like ferns and mosses fit in? Are algae plants? Without knowing these I’ve lived happily enough, but in the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, they took a certain intriguing importance. So I decided to find out.

All plants can be divided into two groups: Vascular Plants and Non-vascular Plants. Non-vascular plants do not have true roots, leaves or stems. Their name stems from the fact that they do not contain water or nutrient-conducting vascular tissues like the xylem and phloem. Simple plants like Algae and Mosses fall into this category.

Vascular plants on the other hand could be a spore producer like Ferns or a seed producer, like most trees you see around you. Seed producers can be further divided into flowering plants (Angiosperms) and non-flowering plants (Gymnosperms). Cycads and conifers like pines and spruce are Gymnosperms. They together with ferns dominated the world during the age of the dinosaurs. There are only about 700 Gymnosperm species in existence today, but 250,000 species of Angiosperm. About130 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants appeared suddenly and in great diversity. From the little I know about these things it seems odd. But then we only have to see man's own progress to understand how. About 5300 years ago, people with primitive stone tools were stumbling confused upon the Earth. A few thousand years later they were on the moon. It seems this sort of thing happens all the time in the natural world.