A Journey

My favourite drawing medium is Oil Pastel. For me it is the most direct way to painting landscapes, but in my country it has a bad name. Almost everyone seem to think it is a amateurish way of painting, they say the colors fade with time, the most professional way of painting according to everyone seems to be Oil Painting. It is such strong belief held by so many that I believed them for many years and threw away almost all of the drawings I did. But one day I found that one of the most iconic images in the world of art "The Scream" done by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was done with pastel in 1893. This painting sold for nearly 120 million dollars in 2012.

The agonised 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". 

There are many theories for why the sky turned blood red including the volcanic eruption of Mount Krakota, one of the most deadly volcanic eruptions in modern history. His work seemed to have frightened the Nazi's for they were banned, but most of the work survived World War II. He painted his own emotional and psychological state which is called soul painting.

William Blake

   

William Blake (1757-1827), was an English poet, painter, and print maker. Considered mad by contemporaries, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry and visual arts. He was a man of intense moral purpose who looked forward to the establishment of paradise on earth. In his strange, mystical poems Blake envisioned earth and air as filled with spiritual forces in unending struggle, “armies of angels that soar, demons that lurk. “ As a child he once thought he saw the face of god peering in through the window. Because no one else could understand the “prophesies” in his verse, people thought him insane. Yet some of his poems are charmingly lyrical, written with almost childlike simplicity.

The first editions of Blake’s poems are remarkable in that the poet was also artist and engraver. He engraved the poems and his illustrations for them upon copper plates. The pages printed from these plates he later tinted by hand. Blake’s illustrations and engravings, both for his own books and for books of other writers, have the same unearthly, symbolical, and mystical quality as his poems. He wrote the following poem:

Jules Verne

Jules Verne (1828-1905), was a French author. He is considered to be the father of science fiction. His novels forecast, often with remarkable accuracy, the submarine, airplane, and automobile; space exploration; and numerous other inventions and scientific developments then many years in the future. A skilled storyteller, he became one of the world's most popular authors and remains so, especially among younger readers, to this day. A number of scientist have credited his writing, which abounds in technical detail with arousing their initial interest in science. 

From the Earth to the Moon (1865) describes the journey of a space vehicle; it is launched from Florida, reaches the moon, and returns to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) concerns the flawed genius of Captain Nemo and his submarine, the Nautilus. In Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Phineas Fogg wins a wager by circling the globe in record time. 

Verne was born in Nantes. He studied law in Paris, and tried writing plays but with little success. The popularity of his first novel, Five Weeks in a Baloon (1863), led him to choose writing as a career.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), was a United States philosopher, logician, and scientist. He was the founder of the philosophical movement called pragmatism, which his friend William James developed. Peirce believed that the meaning of any idea is found in its workability, or practical results. Bertrand Russell wrote "Beyond doubt he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever". Peirce made contributions in many fields, particularly in the modern development of logic, but received little recognition during his life-time. He published only one book, Photometric Researches (1878), but wrote many essays - on logic, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, psychology, religion, and other fields. 

James Cook

Captain James Cook (1728-1779), was an English navigator. Captain cook accurately charted vast regions of the south pacific; provided a basis for England's claim to Australia and New Zealand; and developed a diet that prevented scurvy among seamen. Born of farming parents in Yorkshire, Cook went to sea as a boy and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. His seamanship and deligence soon gained recognition, and four years later he was made a master of a naval sloop. From 1763 to 1767 he explored the St. Lawrence River and the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland. 

In 1768, with a group of scientists, Cook set out on his first expedition, sailing around Cape Horn. The immediate purpose was to observe the transit of the planet Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti. On his voyage, which continued  till 1771, the party went on to explore the coast of New Zealand and to chart the eastern coast of Australia.  As a result of this expedition, Cook was promoted to commander in the navy and was sent with two ships to determine whether there was a continent at the south extremity of the earth. Although they did not sight Antarctica, the explorers were the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. During this expedition of 1772-75, Cook sailed around the world far to the south, mapping the South Pacific and other southern latitudes much as they are known today. By providing the crews with sufficient vegetables, Cook proved that scurvy, a desease caused by lack of vitamin C, need no longer plague men on long voyages. 

Cook was promoted as captain and on his third voyage of discovery, 1776-78, undertook a search for the Northwest Passage - a linking of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans by way of Arctic regions. He approached from the Pacific side and discovered the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. Although he found no passage through the ice, Cook explored the northwest coast upto Bering Strait. After his return to Hawaii, he was killed by a native because of a misunderstanding over a missing boat. The journals of Cook and his associates are among the most entertaining accounts of discovery and scientific investigation.

Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), was a Danish writer. Though a poet and novelist, he is most famous for his fairy tales. He has delighted young readers of all lands with his sometimes simple, always imaginative stories of fir trees and flowers, storks, swans, and nightingales, and princes, princesses and soldiers.

Anderson took traditional tales and themes and by his sympathetic understanding of human emotions and qualities gave them deeper moral and symbolic meaning than they had possessed originally. Some of these tales are based on stories told by common people among whom he spent his childhood. Others are mainly products of his own imagination, though strongly colored by folk themes and settings. Andersen's sunny nature would not permit him to use bitter satire, but he sometimes mocked people's frailties in a gentle way, as in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Often there is a tinge of sadness, as in "The Ugly Duckling." Andersen is said to have considered this story, which tells of an awkward young swan at first mistaken to be a duckling, an allegory of his own life. 

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, the son of a poor shoemaker. His ugliness made him shy, and he was treated rudely by other children in school. When he was 11, his father died and Hans quit school to work in a factory. He amused himself at home by reading plays and acting them out with puppets in a toy theater he had built. When he was 14, Hans left home for Copenhagen. There he tried everything to get into the theater - write, act, sing, dance. He did attract the attention of influential persons and was sent to a government school. Although 17 years old, Hans had to enter a class for small boys. His `unhappiness continued, but he remained in school for five years. He then left to try his hand at poetry, travel books, farce, and fiction.

Andersen's first novel, The Improvisatore (1835), was received enthusiastically, and his financial troubles were at end. In the same year the first instalement of his fairy tales were published, and were reviewed unfavorably by all critics but one. Andersen agreed with this general opinion, for he considered his adult work of more importance. Nevertheless he kept on writing fairy tales. 

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (Leonard) (1894-1963), was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, and poet. He is noted for the satirical novels of his early period. They are chiefly concerned with ideas; plots are unimportant and characters are seldom more than spokesmen for the author’s views. “Point Counter Point” (1928) expresses disgust with the emphasis on intellectualism at the expense of instinct and emotion. “Brave New World” (1932) pictures a technological world of the future in which laboratory produced human beings find satisfaction in mechanized pleasures and a drug.

After the 1930’s, Huxley turned toward philosophy and mysticism. The novels of his later period, such as “Time Must Have a Stop” (1944) and Island (1962), show a decline in Huxley’s literary ability. In “The Doors of Perception” (1954) he writes of his experiences while taking hallucinogenic drugs as mescaline and LSD.

He was born in Surrey, a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a brother of Sir Julian Huxley. After attending Eton College, he graduated from Oxford University in 1915. An eye ailment that caused near-blindness turned him from science studies to literature. In “The Art of Seeing” (1942) he described an eye-training program that greatly improved his sight. He wrote dramatic, art, and musical criticism for the London magazine “Athenaeum” (1919-20), and was dramatic critic of the literary periodical “Westminster Gazette” (1920-21). During and after his residence in Italy (1923-30), he visited India and Central America, settling in California in 1937.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a United States author. Most of his work shows concern for moral issues. A deeply ingrained conscience seems to generate in him an obsession with the problem of sin, its nature and consequences. His strong sense of human guilt tinges most of his novels and short stories with a somber hue. Unlike some other puritans, Hawthorne apparently felt a keen sympathy for the erring and demon driven people he pictures.

Hawthorne liked to call his novels “romances” because they deal with interior rather than outward phases of life. They explore the secret chambers of the heart, soul, and mind. He maintained that a writer of romances, unlike the realist who relies upon personal observation and fidelity of facts, need be faithful only to “the truth of the human heart.” Hawthorne frequently pictures people who are morbid and melancholy, but their gloom is mostly of an inner kind unlike the physical horrors that are characteristic of Poe’s tales. His people ordinarily are more symbolical or allegorical than lifelike, manipulated by the author to make a moral point.

Charles Lyell

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), was a Scottish geologist well known for popularizing the theory of Uniformitarianism - the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same scientific processes still in operation today. (As opposed to Catastrophism). He explained earthquakes and volcanoes among many other things. However his theory of icebergs and the transport of glacial erratics has been proven mostly wrong. Lyell believed in an infinitely long age of Earth, though geological evidence suggested an old but finite age. He was a close friend of Charles Darwin and contributed significantly to Darwin's thinking on the theory of evolution. Although he had difficulty in reconciling his religious beliefs with Darwin's Theory of Evolution, he later published evidence from geology of the time man had existed on Earth. 

Lyell was born into a wealthy family, the eldest of ten children. He worked briefly as a lawyer before entering the world of science. Principles of Geology Lyell's first book was his most famous, most influential and most important. It established Lyell as an important geological theorist. He popularized the work of James Hutton, another Scottish geologist, who died in the year Lyell was born.