Gambling in Painting

I think painter like any other artist indulges in gambling. Sometimes gambling is a choice and sometimes it is inevitable; following is an example for latter.

Situation
Acrylic Gels are opaque when dry and turn transparent on going dry. This means at the time of application of Gel, I had to guess the outcome. Given that Gel takes more than 24hours to dry, I had to wait for quite a while, to see the result. For all practical sense, Gel can not be repealed, once applied, it is sealed.

Acrylic Gel can be mixed with color and that makes outcome more elusive, adding new dimension.

In this example, I wanted to give greasy texture so I applied Acrylic Gel. Some time I think I had not applied the gel at all.

Without Gel



With gel

Devil's decoration

This is my latest painting, called Devils Decoration, let me describe in gruesome spirit :-).

What is Devil's art-work?
Bleeding body is an art-work in the eyes of Devil. And to frame this flesh, Devil uses victim's own bones. And then hangs it on wall, in his living-room, as decorative item.

I started to paint with the above idea and did not know how to fill rest of the canvas or create the ambiance. In order to create ambiance that is not cliche, I applied random color on canvas and simply enhanced the forms that I saw.



The bones and cracks have been generated using Hard Molding Paste so it looks multi-dimensional. Fluid texture comes from Gel. I used varieties of Paste and Gels, along with color-tubes. Given you have hard-body-color, fluid-color, number of types Gels, number of types of pastes, the potential combination could leave one owed, at least that is how I feel.

Gels also add to creativity in a way; Gels are opaque when wet and get transparent as they dry, and this makes them unpredictable, and makes us/painter accept reality :-)

"free-will" amidst the dynamics of time

I started to reside in Newyork from 2001. From that time I have been going to a Gasoline station near my home. The person who fills petrol there, is an Indian, specifically speaking, a Punjabi. I try best to fill gas there so that I can give him a tip. Whenever I go there, we exchange few words in English.

Right after few visits, I suspected his legality in US. Recently, two months back, it become more evident when he told me that his wife comes from India, once in couple of years to see him. Same distance exists between him and his children too. Basically, he can not move around in US borders.

Today, I met him again and remembered our past conversation. Driving back home, started dwelling more in to his situation, using my insight as an immigrant. Major difference between us is that I am sacred. Thinking about his life: I wonder how long can this go on? Is that it, will he never share the roof with his wife and offspring? Why we force ourselves in to such position? These must have made sense at one time, may make sense, to some extent even now. Did we think of exit strategy? Worst, does one exist at all?

Talking about my own life, a over-cast day is a brilliant one to me. On such a day view from my window is very peaceful, and I struglle to convey this to my mom over phone. What makes our communication worse is my mother does not have victorian-like background, so I can not tell her to relate to the verses of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.


Recently, I had kept few paintings under sun and it was a beautiful set up. I could not convey this to my sister over phone, so I e-mailed this picture to her. I doubt this picture helped because photographs do not go beyond their frame.

Are we being forced?
No one sanctioned us to migrate, either legally or illegally. No one is also forcing us to maintain current status. Moreover, this is not an alienating country at all, in fact, for many of us, chances of getting discriminated is higher in our own native country.

Fundamental question is, do we have a choice?
In general, at almost every phase of our lives, neither we are forced nor we are given reasonable choice. French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, proposed existentialism and "free will" theory. According to that people have choice whether to do it or not. It seems, in his advanced years, he expressed doubts about this theory.

Dynamics of time
I also believe that state we are in, is partly due to our action and partly because of the dynamics of our time. We do not control the dynamics consequently can not posses free-will. For example, the Ice sheet in Arctic has to melt, it can not win over the dynamics of weather, and Iceberg can neither control the consequences of its own disintegration.

Ways to absolute free-will
We can not live and also have absolute "free-will". We may move closer to "free-will" if we became one with Gautama Buddha( by having absolute control over our desires). But we can definitely achieve rock solid "free-will", if we withdrew ourselves from this dynamics, in to death.