the house at 4th cross now has a compound wall around it
I went back this morning to finish a sketch of an old tiled house near Yelahanka, one of those with the sloping Mangalore roof and the little parapet with the dented bits. Painted it twice already this year. This time there's a grey compound wall up, tin sheet and a board for a 3BHK project, and the jackfruit tree that used to lean over the wall is just gone. Not cut and lying there. Gone.
So I sat on the opposite side and drew the wall itself, which felt slightly ridiculous. An hour of work on a blank slab. But the light was doing that thing at 8am where everything is gold and wet, and there was a man washing his scooter next to me who kept asking if I was from the paper.
I don't know what the point of this is. I keep painting buildings that won't be there, and people keep telling me the paintings are nice, and I keep wanting to say the painting is not the point. Anyway. Anyone else draw something that was already gone by the time the paint dried?
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The jackfruit tree being gone without a stump is the part that gets me. Not cut and lying there, just erased. I've had that happen with a house I'd been photographing for two years, came back and there was nothing to even photograph around. Drawing the wall instead isn't ridiculous though. The blank slab is the actual subject now. The thing that replaced the thing. I'd probably have done the same and felt stupid about it too.
The digging out is what gets me too. A stump left behind is just laziness or time. Digging it out is a decision. Somebody looked at that and said no trace.
I haven't painted anything that got torn down, but there's a stretch near my parents' place I keep meaning to paint and keep putting off, and this thread is making me feel like I should stop putting it off.
The digging out, yes. A stump you can almost forgive, that's just a machine doing its job in a hurry. Digging it out means someone stood there and wanted the ground to look like nothing was ever on it. That's a different thing altogether.
Go paint the stretch near your parents' place. Do one thing, go this week if you can, even a rough one, even twenty minutes from the car. I put off a house in Malleswaram for two years thinking it would always be there. It isn't now, and all I have is one bad photo from a moving auto.
The stump is what I keep thinking about, because someone had to dig it out. That's not a tree being in the way of a wall, that's effort. Somebody stood there with a machine and removed every trace of it and then swept up after.
And yes, the blank slab being the subject is exactly it, though it took me a while to stop feeling silly about it. I kept wanting to put something in the frame that made it a nice painting. Then I gave up and just drew the wall, the line of the tin, the shadow of the board. It's probably the most honest thing I've done this year and I still don't know if I like it.
Two years photographing a house, I can't imagine. With the sketchbook at least the whole thing is over in a couple of hours. You've been carrying that one around for much longer.