THE IMPORTANCE OF IMPERFECTION - Short Story 2 (Short Stories for Artists, Poets and those who Wander)

Many years ago, I was disappointed with where I was as a painter, it seemed I was going nowhere, horrible days lay ahead. I decided to give up painting altogether and do something like hiking. It was an incredible experience but most people said I was half mad to do such a thing. Unfortunately people take a dull view of hiking in my country and during those troubled times hiking seemed a risky thing to do. So I gave up hiking as a pleasant but unattainable past time. I wondered what I could do. I wondered whether there was some theory that when applied would lead to interesting paintings. So I decided to analyze the paintings of famous artists to try to find a clue to develop my theory. For many months I tried without luck, but one day I found the paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh seems to have been and oddity almost from the beginning. Childhood photos show him staring blankly at a distance. As a child he was serious, quiet and thoughtful. After working unsuccessfully as an art dealer he became a missionary and drifted into solitude and ill health. Perhaps in desperation he took up painting at the somewhat mature age of 27. Not only did he suffer from mental illness and poverty but he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. But what he created over the next ten years is astounding, 2100 art works including 860 paintings, which were so good that he became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

But what struck me was that most of his paintings had an element of roughness even crudeness. 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. 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 crudeness energizes the painting making the whole painting interesting. This was good news for me because I am one of those people in this world who is too lazy or too incompetent to draw buildings perfectly.

I do not know if my theory is correct but I used this theory to paint and came up with some interesting paintings. Of course not everyone was impressed some people called some of my paintings crude and some called them ugly outright. But the important thing was for the first time in many years I felt like painting again. When Vincent van Gogh wrote "Art is to console those who are broken by life" maybe he was writing about me.

THE RED TRI-PLANE - Short Story 1 (Short Stories for Artists, Poets and those who Wander)

 

Many years ago I visited a bookshop and found in it a small model Aero-plane with a wingspan of seven inches. I was amazed by it. It seemed that 1500 Rupees was a very high price for such a small model plane. So I decided to make a plane like it with wood and sell it for 1000 Rupees.

The trouble was I knew nothing at all about woodworking. But in the library I found a book about woodworking, it was a wonderfully written book with clear pictures. The tools you need are simple. There is the hand saw. Then there is the fret saw to cut curves. The chisel which is used to sculpt wood. A rasp to scrape off wood very efficiently. And the vice to hold the wood, the hand drill, and of course the hammer which was already there

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I wondered where I could buy these tools, and found a stretch of road about a kilometer long, in Armour Street (before Panchikawatte) where and on both sides of the road there are shops that sell only woodworking tools. It's incredible that I could engage in this useful pastime by reading a book and buying a few tools so cheaply. But the trouble with woodworking when making small items is that it is very labor intensive. Each small piece takes hours to get right, no wonder it was replaced years ago with metal and then plastic. But plastic doesn't have a “soul”, which wood has in abundance.

The next step was to find a plane to make. I have an old encyclopedia which has pictures of aircraft and under “Historic Aircraft of World War I” I found a red Tri-plane (three wings) that particularly appealed to me. It was the Fokker Dr. 1 Tri-plane flown by Baron Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918), the World War I German flying Ace, who as leader of an air group called the “Flying Circus” personally shot down 80 Allied planes. Richthofen served in the cavalry and infantry before entering air service in 1915, and was known as the “Red Baron” for the color of the plane he flew, but was shot down in aerial combat possibly by Captain A. R. Brown of the British Air Force.

I used mahogany for it is easy to work on. I bought a plank from the wood mill but it was too thick. There is a machine in any wood mill called a Planer-thicknesser that is used to plain wood to the required thickness. I plained it to a fraction of an inch and drew the three wings on it, held it in the vice and used the fret saw to cut it. Then I used the rasp for the slight tapering effect on the top of the wings. In a similar way I cut the tail sections, the propeller and all the other sections except the fuselage from the same plank of wood. The tail sections were a little thinner so I used the rasp to make it thin.

In my own unhumble opinion, the design simplicity of this plane (for mass production) was amazing, a big plank could be used to cut any amount of wings and other parts except the fuselage, and the fuselage itself is just a square pole shaped with the rasp. It seemed to me at that foolish moment that I had overcome the labor intensity problem of wood with a really simple design that still looked great.

I pasted all the parts together and painted it red, and when I painted the black Iron Cross on the wings, fuselage and tail it looked incredible. I felt overjoyed at having made a model plane that actually had the same energy of the real Fokker Dr.1 Tri-Plane flown by the “Red Baron.” The next day I wanted to take it to shops and show it as a sample of what I could build if they were willing to sell, but I never did. For some reason I felt afraid and embarrassed, as if in selling this plane I would be conducting some disgraceful act. Eventually I gave the plane to someone for free. I also lent most of my tools to people who never returned them. I never built a wooden model plane ever again. For something more important came up and soon responsibilities overwhelmed me. And I realized that this was the story of my life. It seemed that another one of my dreams had flown away with the Red Tri-Plane.