Many years ago I read a book about a Local painter featuring his life and work. The only way to describe his 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 even created. 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 in such colors, with such depressing draftsmanship. It was the kind of painting that could be used to put someone 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. You got the strange feeling that you have seen this seascape before, maybe in an old movie or maybe in a dream. But you could never be sure. No doubt this artist was a genius.
One day I was talking with someone about this painter, when he said that it reminded him of British artist L.S. Lowry. L.S. Lowry occupies a unique place in British art. Often called the painter of the Industrial North, Lowry chronicled the everyday life of working people in and around Manchester during a period of profound social and industrial change. His work, instantly recognisable for its simplified figures—popularly known as “matchstick men”—and stark urban landscapes, transformed factory chimneys, mills, streets, and crowds into enduring works of art. Lowry’s paintings are often described as naïve, but this label is misleading. His compositions were carefully structured, with crowds arranged rhythmically across the canvas and buildings reduced to bold, architectural forms. He frequently used a limited palette—whites, greys, blacks, muted reds and blues—to evoke the bleak yet energetic atmosphere of industrial towns. After seeing the paintings of these two artists, I realised for the first time that even mundane things can be used as subject matter to create exciting paintings.
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