Living by oneself demands a certain thought stream in keeping oneself fed, clothed, entertained, and overall un-frustrated with daily goings. There is naturally a sense of planning that creeps in – from the mundane “what shall I cook for dinner?” to the phone call from the equally lonesome friend looking for company to see a movie or play tennis. After spending a good chunk of the day in such planning, it is tempting to make a choice of seeing without observing, hearing without listening, gulping down without chewing. These do not form the ideal conditions for art as a hobby to flourish.
For many months now, I have had these two, unrelated, ideas. One is to freeze a beautiful chess position by bending metal wire arching over reflective, glass pieces of odd shapes and sizes inset into clay baked in the kitchen oven. This was to be an ode to one of my passions, which also unfortunately is one of the major time-sinks in the same passive manner that people have come to interact with the idiot box.
The second is to paint this image, in impressionistic style, of a fork in the road in a jungle, so to speak, with the left fork leading to somewhere explicitly colourful, sunny, obstacle-free while the right fork is darker, with impressions of snakes and other slimy creatures lurking in the shade that is too prevalent. There is this pair of eyes looking inward – both eyes, inward! – at the forefront of the fork, with a pile of books and sheafs of paper beneath. It suspended in mid-air and is translucent, like, with no body to hold it aloft and steady. Yet, steady it surely is. The judging eye. The all-knowing one. The eternally compassionate. Yet formidable in its assessment of right and wrong. Karma. Buddha. Baba. The observer is me. I am the one being judged. The eyes also guard the way, and seem to pointedly smile at my knowing my fate, my choice, my path ahead. But the observer also reads in the compassion of the eyes that the choice is not a Hobson’s one, that there is much distance to travel before the fork actually needs to be taken, that the fork is ahead of me and not already behind, that the choice is not presaged, that there is much more paper to be added to the sheaf on the jungle floor. Ah, the difficulty of verbalizing a mental image in the inherently restricted medium of spoken language!
The ideas happened many months ago. Impressionism as a style seemed a natural occurrence given my recently discovered love of colours, augmented vastly by the visiting Monets at the de Young. Chess as a thematic idea for artistic expression was inspired by some magical positions in a book compiled by, but of course, a Russian chess master. But since those flashes in the proverbial art pan, there hasn’t been the same mental aptitude, inspiration, motivation to see these ideas through.
Another reason, to add to having to live and fend for by myself, is the basic skills to realize these ideas are not yet honed by ages of intense practice as was and is the habit of the Masters of yore and present. In fact, I haven’t even gotten around to spending an entire day in the company of the metal wire or graphite pencils.
Photography happened serendipitously, one accident at a time. The time the Alaska trip came around, I was pleasantly surprised, nay, shocked, at how good the photos turned out when I hadn’t actually started that journey planning for or expecting a high standard of results. I am hoping that the same stumbling, bumbling, dilettantish approach at learning the ropes, enough to translate a mental image into a concrete cognizant outcome, plays out for these two ideas also.
For many months now, I have had these two, unrelated, ideas. One is to freeze a beautiful chess position by bending metal wire arching over reflective, glass pieces of odd shapes and sizes inset into clay baked in the kitchen oven. This was to be an ode to one of my passions, which also unfortunately is one of the major time-sinks in the same passive manner that people have come to interact with the idiot box.
The second is to paint this image, in impressionistic style, of a fork in the road in a jungle, so to speak, with the left fork leading to somewhere explicitly colourful, sunny, obstacle-free while the right fork is darker, with impressions of snakes and other slimy creatures lurking in the shade that is too prevalent. There is this pair of eyes looking inward – both eyes, inward! – at the forefront of the fork, with a pile of books and sheafs of paper beneath. It suspended in mid-air and is translucent, like, with no body to hold it aloft and steady. Yet, steady it surely is. The judging eye. The all-knowing one. The eternally compassionate. Yet formidable in its assessment of right and wrong. Karma. Buddha. Baba. The observer is me. I am the one being judged. The eyes also guard the way, and seem to pointedly smile at my knowing my fate, my choice, my path ahead. But the observer also reads in the compassion of the eyes that the choice is not a Hobson’s one, that there is much distance to travel before the fork actually needs to be taken, that the fork is ahead of me and not already behind, that the choice is not presaged, that there is much more paper to be added to the sheaf on the jungle floor. Ah, the difficulty of verbalizing a mental image in the inherently restricted medium of spoken language!
The ideas happened many months ago. Impressionism as a style seemed a natural occurrence given my recently discovered love of colours, augmented vastly by the visiting Monets at the de Young. Chess as a thematic idea for artistic expression was inspired by some magical positions in a book compiled by, but of course, a Russian chess master. But since those flashes in the proverbial art pan, there hasn’t been the same mental aptitude, inspiration, motivation to see these ideas through.
Another reason, to add to having to live and fend for by myself, is the basic skills to realize these ideas are not yet honed by ages of intense practice as was and is the habit of the Masters of yore and present. In fact, I haven’t even gotten around to spending an entire day in the company of the metal wire or graphite pencils.
Photography happened serendipitously, one accident at a time. The time the Alaska trip came around, I was pleasantly surprised, nay, shocked, at how good the photos turned out when I hadn’t actually started that journey planning for or expecting a high standard of results. I am hoping that the same stumbling, bumbling, dilettantish approach at learning the ropes, enough to translate a mental image into a concrete cognizant outcome, plays out for these two ideas also.
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