The Wonderful World of Art Books

 

Many years ago bad days descended upon me. It seemed that my troubles would never end. I lived in a world of semi-detached unhappiness, interrupted time to time with bad news. It seemed like some people were doing really well, unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them. But one day I decided to borrow an art book and unexpectedly stepped into a different world.

The introduction on this book began as follows: “Shall I be accused of wishful thinking if I promise the reader that oil painting is not all that difficult?” It was for me an invitation to amble. Then the book says about the importance of developing a personal style because “in the last analysis, it is this which will mark out your paintings as different from the rest.” And it went on “And if I am in danger of over-emphasizing the importance of self-determination, it is because many beginner’s and adult amateurs miss the joy of painting through the very fear of forgetting the written word…

All of us like to draw the sky bright blue with puffs of white for clouds, but apparently, this is wrong. Even a clear blue sky devoid of any clouds cant be drawn in this way. The color is more positive blue at the top of the picture - the portion which we have to raise our eyes in nature - than it is directly above the horizon which is lighter. Though I’ve never kind of noticed it, it really is true, for when I followed this principle I found that my skies looked real for it “conveyed the dome-like nature of the sky.”

The book goes on about clouds “Isolated white clouds will soon be noticed to have a clearer (not sharper) definition at the top than underneath. The lightest portion is also at the top, while at the bottom they are softer and more indistinct in outline”. This seemed more difficult to understand but when I followed it my clouds had depth and seemed real rather than the white puffballs floating aimlessly in a blue sky.

How so many good ideas could be packed into such a small book was amazing. The drawings don’t tell you everything you need to know but are so “clever” that they make you want to draw. This book falls under the “How to Draw” and “How to Paint” kind of books but there are some equally interesting art books that seem to deal more with “Art History and Analysis.” When you read them you get the feeling that most of the modern artists mentioned were at the very least drunk or possibly completely insane and there were many of them forming “Art Movements.” And there are many intelligent people willing to buy their work for millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. In “Twenty Marilyns” a 1962 work by Andy Warhol, the artist seems to have more or less printed the same image twenty times on a canvas, in what he called the “assembly line effect.” It is said to reflect critically upon the supposed uniqueness of the work of art in a world of mass reproduction and mass media. He has “sought to abolish both the craftsmanship and genius of the individual artist through embracing mechanical reproduction.

Then take minimalism. In this, the artist exerts minimal manual effort, like for example keeping a yellow fluorescent light in a large empty room. I kind of never understood this. If doing as little as possible seems to be the point why do anything at all? Then I finally got it...it is not the artwork itself but the clever idea behind it that gives it its value. It's incredible. 

The Sea at Night - Abstract digital drawing

The stars may not shine as brightly - Poem by me

 

The stars may not shine as brightly
And the moon may wander around
But time for you
Has not stopped

For I see you walking
On the beaches of my poems
Alone in an Island
Sailing on ships that have long stopped sailing

But if after reading this
Some other business intrudes
And my words are left to collect the dust
Let time not pass
Without a kind thought of your friend

Art

I still remember my drawing in grade 3. The old teacher really liked it and gave it 99 marks. She held it up and examined it. The truth is it was a weak painting even considering my age, but the other students were worse. Nobody took art seriously considering it a waste of time and a bad career choice. I was the only one simple-minded enough to have great enthusiasm for it. 

I left my small village school and went to a big school and found in that great school not a single person even meekly interested or having the slightest ability in art including the art teacher. But its cousin music was still very popular. You see everyone wanted to be doctors and engineers, but still wanted to sing at a social event to impress the others. But drawing and painting had no such value and parents discouraged children from it. There was an almost total lack of interest in art that pervaded the whole country.

But the trouble was I wasn’t a good artist. I had great enthusiasm for art but had only the skill of a mediocre draughtsman. But I kept drawing and painting even after I left school. Unfortunately, I could not find a job as an artist and instead decided on another career choice. With time I forgot all about art. But I felt that there was something missing in my life. Yesterday I went to Kalapola, the annual exhibition by artists near the Vihara Mahadevi Park. There were many people to view the artwork but in the time I spent there almost nobody bought any. It was obvious that some people there thought it was all childish. 

 It depends on who you are but I believe that things like music and art fill a place in at least some people's minds that would otherwise remain empty. But I know many perfectly happy people who are not interested in either - it is something that has always baffled me. But a few days ago I visited such a friend, who had retired from a highly successful career, and he seemed miserable. Only then did I realise the true value of art. It is the only work like thing  you do, not to be successful or earn money, or even fame but purely to be happy.

The Zoo

 

My most memorable visit to this zoo was about 15 years ago. The animals were amazing but equally impressive was the open spaces like the lake and trees where birds used to gather. It had a terraced structure which gave the impression that you were climbing down a hill that added to the adventure. Naturally, it showcased only Vertebrates or animals with a backbone and skeleton. Even with my limited knowledge of these things, I knew that there were strange animals called Invertebrates, some so strange that you could almost believe that they were from another planet. So one day I decided to find out.

All animals fall into 35 different groups or Phyla, although only about 9 of them are well-known. All vertebrates (Mammals, fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles) actually fall under one phylum called Chordata. But what are the other phyla? In the phylum, Mollusca is the snail, whose most prominent features seem to be a muscular foot, a mantle with a shell, and eyes. Snails like other invertebrates do not have a spinal cord or one single brain. Instead, they have a set of ganglia (groupings of neurons) that distribute the control of the various parts of it. Slugs are closely related to snails and its motto seems to be “Just Hang on”, because it is constantly in danger of drying out in warm weather and being eaten by other animals.

So it comes as a surprise that one of the cleverest animals the octopus, is also a mollusk. I once read a weirdly convincing story by one of the world's most renowned science fiction writers who says that octopuses can build and use tools, however being under the sea and unable to use fire to forge metals, its evolutionary growth is stunted. And who can ignore the elusive, haunting giant squid, something straight out of a nightmare.

In any case, Mollusca is the second most diverse animal phylum, after Arthropoda, with approximately 93 000 species distributed between three major lineages: gastropods (‘stomach footed’ – 70 000 species including snails, land and sea slugs, limpets), bivalves (20 000 species including oysters, mussels, clams), and cephalopods (‘head footed’ − 900 species including octopuses, squids, and nautiluses).

Without ever having seen a starfish I had always felt that starfish are overrated in literature, particularly poetry. But one day I was wading in the shallow crystal clear sea in Trincomalee, when I saw a large orange starfish. As I went to have a closer look, it glided swiftly away, it was amazing,  I’ve never seen anything so magical. Starfish are not fish, but are classified under the phylum Echinodermata. Other animals in this group include the sea urchin, sea cucumber, and sand dollar. All animals in this group are only found in the sea.

Of course not all Invertebrates are as magical as the starfish, some are repulsive some are deadly and some are so simple that they could be mistaken for plants. Take the sponge for example (Phylum Porifera), the simplest animal, its motto seems to be “I ain’t going nowhere” because it is attached to the seabed. Sponges are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular, heterotrophic, lack cell walls, and produce sperm cells. Unlike other animals, they lack true tissues and organs. The shapes of their bodies are adapted for maximal efficiency of water flow through the central cavity, where the water deposits nutrients and then leaves through a hole and that’s about it. But if you think Invertebrates are boring wait till you meet the insects some of whom could potentially kill you. Insects come under the Phylum Arthropoda. Other animals in this phylum apart from insects are the myriapods (including centipedes and millipedes); arachnids (including spiders, mites and scorpions); crustaceans (including slaters, prawn and crabs). Although it’s difficult to think of a crab as being related to an insect if you look closely it kind of looks similar.

THE RAINMAKER : (I wrote this short story)

 

My uncle was once a world famous scientist and inventor, but now nobody took him seriously. For all his brilliance if two words could be used to describe him they would be Extremely Eccentric. He had the strange habit of suddenly asking a physics question in the middle of a normal conversation and you were liable to get scolded if you did not give a satisfactory answer. For this reason, some people including many of his former colleagues avoided him. Some said it was old age encroaching, and some said it was an illness of the mind caused by chemical experiments when he was younger.

But apart from this eccentricity, he was a kind and friendly man and as much as I avoided him I could not help feeling guilty so one day I went and met him. "Oh there you are at last, you numbskull, you have been avoiding me for one month" said he. "I had my exams, but it was all in vain for they asked questions from just the part of the syllabus that I avoided" said I. "Serves you right, now tell me how the Universe was created" said he. "Well according to the Big Bang theory, it all started as an infinitely small primeval atom, and it expanded to form the stars, planets, galaxies and everything else in the universe. But what the theory does not explain is how the primeval atom came to be in the first place and what was there before that" said I

"That’s right, it doesn't explain it, but I found the answer for that too, though it is a secret and I don't want to tell it to you right now. But I have something interesting to show you look out of the window" said he. Outside was an enormous metal tower, and a field of what looked like huge batteries. "The world is facing an energy crisis, economies have fallen because of it and it is only going to get worse, but I solved that problem through this invention. Look what happens when I press this switch" said he. As he pressed the switch there was a crackling sound and within minutes dark clouds appeared over the tower. Soon it turned into a terrible thunderstorm. "You see Thomas this tower has a charge that attracts lightning, which leads to a chain reaction that causes thunderstorms" said he. Soon lightning discharged in the tower almost continuously making an ear splitting noise. "Cant you see what's happening Thomas, I am converting the static charge in the lightning into chemical energy in the field batteries which is then used to make an electric current that could be used by people” said he.

Two weeks later I returned and to my utter dismay he asked “What do you know of the theory of relativity”. “Well uncle according to it time is relative and not absolute. The faster you move the slower time passes for you. As you approach the speed of light Time stops” said I. “But what has the speed of light to do with time, you pinhead” said he. “I do not know though I have often wondered” said I. “No you idiot, Light and other electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light and even in a stationery object the small particles that make it move at the speed of light. But when the whole object moves the need to move is compensated so the small particles that make up the object move correspondingly slower making it look like time moves slower for it. But when I tell this theory to other scientist they call me a nut” said he.

“But uncle don’t worry about it, for your lightning machine will make you famous, nobody ever figured out the way to make electricity from lightning,” said I. My uncle’s face darkened as I said this and he said “That’s where the problem is Thomas, I can’t present my invention to the world for it would be misused. Imagine what a superpower could do if it got its hand on my invention. It could even be used as a weapon. I don't want my invention to be used to kill people, So I decided to destroy it, in fact I already have” said he. My uncle died two months later, I think of a broken heart because he had to destroy his precious invention. I do not know if his theory of the universe was correct but I know that he was the greatest scientist nobody ever talked about.

DOOMSDAY (I wrote this short story)

 

When I heard the news that my grandfather was agitated, I rushed to see him. Night had fallen, and I had to walk along the beach for about 2 Km to reach his home. Why one of the greatest scientists on the Island had to live in this remote corner of the world had always been a mystery to me. He once said that bright city lights interfered with his observation of the stars. Here near the equator in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, in a remote fishing village north of town, he carried out his work undisturbed.

As a young man, he had made great discoveries in physics. But it was as an inventor that he excelled. Although his inventions laid the basis for great technological advances in the 21st century, he was never interested in making money, something I could never understand. He scorned wealth and worldly honors. While other men made money from his inventions, he dedicated himself exclusively to scientific research.

But lately, he had become strange. I think it all went wrong for him when he ventured into fields of science that he should best have left alone at his age. As a young man, he could have easily solved the great mysteries of the Universe, but now he was very old. Senility (The decline of memory and other mental functions associated with old age) really is a sad thing.

The first thing he said as I entered was, "I am on the verge of a discovery that will transform the universe. "You mean transform the way we view the Universe?" said I. "No, literally transform the Universe," said he. "Gravity affects Time; that part is certain, but what is the true nature of Time? That's the question I want answered. If you go endlessly in a straight line, you will end up in the same place you began, but how much Time would it take.......for example, if you go at an almost infinite speed. Answer this question, and you would have answered how big the Universe is, and more importantly, how it was created. "You mean how the Universe was formed," said I. " No created," said he. A great fear verging on panic had come over me; clearly, he was talking rubbish, and it had a religious element too, which was all the more worrying. But before I could say anything, he went on........

"I have built a machine Kelvin that will take an object to the end of the universe in an instant, at which point it will be in the same place it began; by using it, I want to find out how the universe was created" I panicked, I feared for his sanity. It was obvious he had suffered from what some people call a breakdown, perhaps related to overwork and old age. The best thing I could do was run back to Trincomalee town and try to find a doctor fast. I mumbled something and turned to go, but he interrupted me. "One other thing, Kelvin, there is a slight chance that my experiment could go wrong, which would, of course, mean the end of the Universe. To start the experiment, I must press the switch, do you think I should press the switch or maybe destroy the machine." He brought the most strange-looking black box, perhaps a little bigger than one cubic foot, on which was written, Anti-matter. I didn't know what to say, and I didn't say anything. I walked out, resolving to find a doctor fast.

When I reached the beach, it was midnight. It was a strange night, and the ceaseless waves of the Indian Ocean broke with a thud on the sand to my left. To my right was a thick jungle with noisy insects. I remembered what my grandfather had said many years ago "I want to see the stars shine over the sea." Then I got a strange feeling that it was getting darker, so I looked up and there over the Indian Ocean one by one the last of the Stars were sputtering out....................

Oil Pastel on Paper

 

Oil Pastel on Paper

 

James Fenimore Cooper

 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), was a United States author. He is Chiefly remembered for his Leatherstocking series of novels about Indians and frontiersmen, but he also wrote tales of the sea and other books. Cooper was the first American author to win wide popularity in Europe. He did more than any other writer to create the theme of the crafty but noble Redskin pitted against the equally resourceful woodsman.

Mark Twain and others ridiculed Cooper for his impossibly wooden heroines, his unreal dialogue and plots involving miraculous escapes from dangerous situations. Much of the criticism is justified, but Coopers skill in weaving an exciting tale and picturing a romantic woodland background has helped his books remain popular.

Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the second youngest in a Quaker family of 12. When he was one year old, the family moved to the shore of the Otsego Lake in western New York. There his father founded the village of Cooperstown. Young Cooper soon became acquainted with the Indians and the forests of the region. He entered Yale College at 13, but was dismissed in his third year for playing a prank. He went to sea as a common sailor in 1806, and in 1808 he received a commission as midshipman in the navy.

His dissatisfaction with an English novel provoked him to say he could write a better one. Precaution (1820), an imitative society novel, was the result of his wife’s demand for proof. It was unsuccessful. In 1821 Cooper published The Spy at his own expense. This romance of the American Revolution made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic and caused him to be called the equal of Sir Walter Scott as a historical novelist.

'Harbor' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

'Factories' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

The Wonder called Plants

In Ella I visited the Nine Arch Bridge, an incredibly scenic viaduct bridge through which the train passes. It is thought to be one of the best examples of colonial-era railway construction. The construction of the bridge was thought to have been done by P.K. Appuhami, a Ceylonese builder, in consultation with British engineers. There are many interesting stories surrounding P.K. Appuhamy and the bridge. According to one story when construction work commenced the Great War (World War I) began, and the British reallocated the steel from this site to the battlefront. When the work came to a standstill the locals built the bridge with stone bricks and cement, but without using any steel. Using steel or not, this bridge looks rock solid and though countless trains have passed through it every day for nearly a century works flawlessly.

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.

Colonialism

 

Take on a wretched land

Turn it into good

Civilize its savages

Re-habilitate if you could

In the cloak of freedom

Hide a show of force

Or in a show of patriotic pride

Hide a greed that’s even worse

Civilize a sullen people

Enter an unknowable land

In the guise of something good

Do something truly bad

Dry its living rivers

Bleed its trees dry

These roads must you have treaded

When you walk into your final night

P.G. Wodehouse

The feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet Jeeves were the creations of the infinitely well-meaning and later on much-misunderstood humorist named P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse’s life at this time was not going well when he joined the London branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited for it and found the work baffling and difficult, but he would come every day eager to write for magazines. But between 1908 and 1915, he created unforgettable characters that made him famous. Psmith was a strikingly original character based on hotelier and impresario Rupert D’Oyly Carte, whose monocle, studied suavity and stateliness of speech Wodehouse cleverly adopted for his character. “Something New” became his first farcical novel and also best-seller and although some of his later stories were gentler and lightly sentimental, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year, "Extricating Young Gussie” about Bertie and Jeeves was published. He wrote about them for the rest of his life.

His unwise broadcasts from German radio to the US, during the Second World War caused great controversy even though they were comic and apolitical. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves. Wodehouse never returned to England.

Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page. However not everyone agreed. The writer Alan Bennet thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious”. Another literary critic Q.D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". Sean O’Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920’s called Wodehouse “English literature’s performing flea”. Another critic wrote “It is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a kind of comic poetry."