Oil Pastel : "Jungle Path"

 

Oil Pastel: "A lone tree in the Morning Sunshine"

 

Oil Pastel

Most artists don’t use oil pastel, because of its many weaknesses. It was such a strong belief held by me that I threw away all the drawings I did. But one day I found that one of the most iconic images in the world of art "The Scream" (1893), by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was done using tempera, oil, and pastel on cardboard, he sometimes even used crayon. The cardboard was unprimed, and Munch applied the paint quickly to create an energetic, expressive effect. This painting sold for nearly 120 million dollars in 2012.

The agonized face in the painting is said to depict "The Anxiety of the Human Condition", something that seems to have been always present in Munch's life. With a childhood of illness and bereavement, Munch always dreaded getting a mental condition that many of his relatives had. No wonder he drew such haunting paintings. He later described his inspiration for the painting as follows:

"I was walking along the road with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature". I liked this drawing so much that I decided to draw it without copying it. Halfway into the painting, it went terribly wrong but I managed to salvage it to an extent. The result is given below together with the original drawing.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891), was an American novelist. “Moby Dick” (1851), his masterpiece, uses Captain Ahab’s relentless and fanatical pursuit of a great white whale to symbolize the conflict between man and fate, good and evil. Melville’s books were popular only briefly during his lifetime and were almost completely neglected for about three-quarters of a century. When rediscovered in the 1920’s, he was recognized as a major American author.

Melville was born in New York City. His merchant father died bankrupt when Herman was 12. He attended Albany Academy until he was 15, and then worked as a bank clerk, farmer, and teacher. At 17 he shipped as a cabin boy to Liverpool, probably to get away from his tyrannical mother. Melville describes this voyage, which gave him a love for the sea, in “Redburn” (1849). Returning in 1837, he taught school until 1840. Then he joined the crew of the whaler “Acushnet”. Harsh treatment caused him to jump ship at the Marquesas Islands, where he was held in friendly captivity for several weeks by Typee cannibals. His adventures are set down in Typee (1846) and Mardi (1849). Melville escaped on an Australian whaler, but left it at Tahiti. His stay there is reflected in Omoo (1847). After clerking in Hawaii, he served a year in the U.S. Navy. This gave him material for “White-Jacket” (1850), and for his last completed work, “Billy Budd”. (Though written before Melville’s death, “Billy Budd” remained unpublished until 1924.)

“Typee” made Melville famous, and he soon became prominent in New York literary circles. In 1847, he was married to Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. After a visit to Paris and London, he lived 13 years at “Arrowhead”, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was his neighbour, and “Pierre” (1852), a psychological study of guilt, suggests his influence on Melville. In 1853 a fire at his publisher’s destroyed the plates of Melville’s books and most of the unsold copies in stock. Melville’s popularity had already waned. His writing became tinged with pessimism, melancholy, and mysticism. After “Piazza Tales” (1856), short stories, he wrote verse. “Clarel” (1876), a long religious poem, was inspired by a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1856. In 1863 he moved to New York City, where he was a customs inspector, (1866-85).

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an English painter and graphic artist. He is known especially for his luminous, imaginative landscapes and seascapes. A prolific artist, Turner did thousands of sketches, engravings, water colors, and oils. His interest in the effect of light and color upon form foreshadowed the work of the impressionist.

Turner's works are usually divided into three styles. In his early period he painted landscapes and historical pictures in quiet tones of green, blue, and brown, using the brighter colors very sparingly. About 1819, after a trip to Italy, a change came over his work. He began to use brighter, purer colors, without dark shadows. During his middle period his works, such as The Fighting Temperaire, became more impressionistic.

Turner became more absorbed in color and light, and the works of his last period grew more abstract. In Burning of the Houses of Parliament and Rain, Steam and Speed light, color and atmosphere dominate; form and subject are barely suggested. Steamer in a Snowstorm shows his use of swirling masses of color to express emotion. These later works were ridiculed by his contemporaries, but they have much in common with 20th-century abstract painting and are now widely admired.

Turner was born in London, the son of a barber. He had very little schooling but early showed a talent for drawing. He entered the Royal Academy school at 14 and first exhibited there at 15. When 24, Turner was elected associate of the Royal Academy. He became a full time member in 1802 and was appointed professor of perspective in 1807. In his will, Turner left most of his works to the British People. About 300 oil paintings and sketches and about 19,000 drawings and water colors are exhibited in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum.

He lived in London all his life, retaining his Cockney accent and assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. Intensely private, eccentric and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He became more pessimistic and morose as he got older, especially after the death of his father, after which his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, and his art intensified. In 1841 Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845. Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists". 

BOOKS

Recently, I visited a second-hand bookshop and bought a book subtitled “30 Modern Australian Short Stories”, each written by a different author. Australians, as everyone knows, are an adventurous people, so I was looking forward to this exciting read. But what I got was a shock. I was shocked by how ambiguous the endings were. In the first story, a girl goes for a swim in dangerous waters. Does she escape the sea and return home? The story does not say; it kind of stops there. The next story by a different author ends in a similar ambiguous way. And the next and the next.  It seems that ending an otherwise interesting story in a depressingly ambiguous way is something English writers are particularly proud of.

It is all the fault of Charles Dickens. In his novel “Great Expectations,” he ends the book with the following paragraph. 'I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her'. Yes, the ending of Great Expectations is deliberately ambiguous, leaving the reader to ponder Pip and Estella's future relationship. While they part holding hands, Estella has just stated her desire to remain alone, and Pip has expressed his intention to remain a bachelor. This, combined with Pip's tendency to misinterpret situations, creates a sense of uncertainty about their future together.  Disappointed, I read a translation of a French novel and found that the French were ambiguous, not at the end but from the beginning to the end. Is it too much to ask for a book where the reader knows what happens to the characters in the end after taking the trouble to read the entire book?

Drawing by me

 

Oil Pastel drawing by me