This was originally supposed to be a swamp landscape, but I got frustrated with the colors not blending, etc. I painted the whole canvas black and ended up with this
This is how my brain works when I imagine. To see more artworks, follow my Instagram account the.rainmaker_
Link : https://www.instagram.com/the.rainmaker_/
An article/rant/annotation to an illustration. A #Hackney bar and its flies.
This picture is not as sad and blue as it might at first seem, I promise.
It is early in the week and the pub becomes the territory of the most outspoken drinkers. Raised somewhere between Churchill and Harold MacMillan, a night such as this is time for them to spin out a yarn of nostalgic fantasy. Encouraged by the lack of a crowd and with space to fill, statements start to fly.
In the opening rounds the barman athletically hits back with factual blocks and reality-check haymakers; statistics and personal experiences are given. Two histories cross examined, one where 1982 means Thatcher and the Falklands, the other renders Reagan and the AIDS crisis. Stoicism and national pride vs mental health and realism.
In the latter rounds the barman is fatigued, swaying on the backbar, glasses begin to stack up as form begins to drop. The older men seem stronger than ever.
The barflies come in close now, they scrutinise his generations work ethic and make wild political comments on poverty, immigrants and the minimum wage.
The barman is close to sheer bloody despair, he maintains his defence and focuses on breathing while maintaining his professional stance.
But at the end of the night the barman knows HE will ring that bell, they will politely leave and they will return again in a week and maybe, just maybe there will be a change, common ground or maybe at least polite silence.
But what these interactions have given despite the salt in the eye is community and an exchange between generations, culture and class of those participating. No home is ever straight forward, no relative without their good and bad traits and in a world where we often slide into echo chambers online or in our physical environments, the pub is still a place where society is family, face to face, pint to pint. Or maybe it's just a room with alcohol on tap?
Grandfather was a clergyman and used to preach to the King. Once, before his children and his children's children and his children's children's children covered the face of the earth, Grandfather came to a long field which was surrounded by forests and hills so that it looked like Paradise. At one end it opened out into a bay for his descendants to bathe in.
Then Grandfather thought, here will I dwell and multiply, for verily this is the Land of Canaan.
Then Grandfather and Grandmother built a big two-storey house with a sloping roof and lots of rooms and steps and terraces and a huge veranda and placed plain wooden furniture everywhere inside and outside the house and when it was ready Grandfather began to plant things until the field became a Garden of Eden where he walked around in his big black beard. All he had to do was to point at a plant and it was blessed and grew until it groaned under its own weight.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
