16. Artists Should Not Paint in Huts

Painting in the hut is an experience that every artist should try at least once in a lifetime- but not for keeps.

 The atmosphere of wooden planks closing in on you with Duchess, the mother cat, on top of the stack of canvases and the baby cat, Snow White, under the stool, hiding away because she has flu whilst the pink giant clock with the photo of a white smudged face kitty- just like Snow White's two sisters, Cinderella and Cleopatra, one of which had been devoured by wild animals and the other shot by hunters, has a strange effect on one's impulses.

Melancholy, if not sadness pours unto my painting. The period of sadness began with the death of the two kittens, Cinderella first and the black faced Cleopatra the day after. A cloud of utter disbelief that they had gone was wrapped around me so tightly I could no longer breathe any ideas into my brain any more. Then when Mum died, my own mother, that is, somehow it didn't seem so hard as it should have been, the death of the kittens had acted as shock absorber- so used was I to loss of what was a part of my affection of sorts.

"Sunflowers 3 Sept 07" 60x80 cm Acrylic on Canvas

But never had I seen so drab sunflowers before- I said looking at the painting. Even Van Gough in all his drudgery did not produce so washed out, insipid work. On the contrary, so strong was his misery, that horrid as they might have seemed, his sunflowers left their mark, an inedible mark on us mortals... And when in the house, as the clock makes itself heard every time it strikes a second, I get an urge to go back to the shed and see those insipid sunflowers again- so different are they from anything I have ever done in the past that they must be worth a second look.

Being very curious, the first thing I look at when I go into people’s houses is their walls and what’s on them; and should there be a painting, ninety nine times out of a hundred, it’s perfectly beautiful. Perhaps envy makes me say I don't like paintings that are pretty pictures, simply because I am quite incapable of painting anything perfectly- on the other hand I can create beauty, otherwise scores of people would not keep my efforts on their walls.

I have become aware of the fact that I am not only no longer willing to stay there and plod for hours on end on producing something meticulously perfectly which as an art student I - even though grudgingly, did- but now I won't even tolerate it. As I was coercing myself in trying with accuracy and care to make something of the shape resemble the petals of a sunflower, I threw the paintbrush back in the jar and refused to continue such drudgery.

I guess time for me too is getting short and now sacrificing whatever time I have left in doing something I was not born to do is something I find intolerable.

So I picked up a dry brush and put it in the yellow paint, then the white, then the sage levelling the saturation by feeling and again by feeling and touch, barely touching the board, I brushed the bristles to and fro as if breathing around the dark centre- first in one direction, then in the other until the feather-like shape pleased my senses- Yet how forlorn they seemed!

I found it hard to believe that I, who for the life of me could not remember for one moment ever setting my sight on producing anything but a festive painting, could now bring forth such drab looking flowers which in their downcast ness seemed to have had lost their smile and replaced their lustre with something of an unfathomable intrigue.

Related Articles : Jenny Talber includes one of my sunflower paintings in her thesis on "Visual Arts" in webdesign (PDF page 9)