Musings. Ex Libris

It is all about peopling the void. Crowdedness dispels the paranoia when one is puzzling over a blank canvas. Regardless of how the result will be it is often an accomplishment if every corner of the picture is filled. I can also hear music drifting out of the cluttered image I just finished: the music that is not too uproarious, but loud enough to warrant me a restful night of sleep. An open, empty space and a gaping chasm are enough to introduce disquietude into my otherwise orderly life. My orderly life mainly consists carrying out my role as a paltry nonentity, namely, “filling up the corner.” Every one of us is like a grain of sand who is always at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of sea. Crowdedness is peace, is stateliness, is life. Architecture fuels Berenice Abbott’s passion for photography. Every building is a man-made monster- a monster that is impregnably armoured, a monster that is impossible to tame. At least, we can imagine Abbott thinking, I...

It is all about putting your best face forward. Photographer captures the fugitive moment before it flees. Painter, like an envious sister of Photograher’s, constantly resents the ephemeral existence of a mesmerising smile, which often freezes into a stiff, twitchy line even before she applies onto the canvas a tentative stroke. But one day as Painter is doing half-heartedly another portrait and racking her brain trying to recall what ingenious sparks of spirit that just seconds before flash across the sitter’s otherwise stoical face, her paintbrush takes a sudden and willful sweep over the canvas, leaving a faint but perceptible line on the person’s forehead. Disgruntled at first when Painter sees what a careless mistake she has compounded with her clumsy toil, but then, after assessing the screwed portrait at several different angles, a mischievous smile plays upon her lips. The sitter remains the same throughout the process of painting but the authorit...