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.
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