ETCHING AN ANCIENT SKY

The earth has no outline. Water is without margins. Trees are without solid contours. Perhaps it might have overwhelmed us to consume Nature’s bounty in all its edgeless joys; and therefore, our eyes have been made so as to give a periphery to whatever we see in front of us.

We frame compositions, a hundred a day almost involuntarily, as we skim past the things that happen to cross our vision. This subtle flair is what visual artists hone so diligently - to carefully choose every composition, every element that would form a part of a painting. For landscape painters, it is an unspoken challenge to stand almost equal to Nature; to lend its vast freedom a frame to rest within.

 

The day I take the train from London to Manningtree to begin my walk around Constable country, the beloved place of 18^th century landscape painter John Constable (and many others), I am quite enthusiastic about the goals of my travel. But strangely, my mind is almost void of thoughts. It is only days later, when I try to pen things down on paper, I realise, yet again, that Nature induces deep introspection and not linear logical thinking. 

 

The sun is out and so are the locals walking their dogs; it is a pleasant welcome indeed as I start my sojourn. Footpaths turn into narrow lanes, narrow lanes bulge into wider terrains. I get glimpses of the Stour river, still and listless. It is very much like journeying into paintings - the elements are common; it is their arrangement and specific combinations that lend each place a special emotion. Constable country is a combination of the dainty waist of the Stour, hills like green waves frozen in delight, and a limpid voice to its cosy countenance. Not to mention the immense historical and creative weight as well which it holds. I wonder how the whole place looks and sounds in winter though; an absent sun must render a more mystifying, foggy tint to it.

 

I reach the adorable hamlet of Flatford pretty soon. The sun is dusting the resistant heat of early autumn; the luscious Dedham vale beckons just beyond. Standing on the ground at Flatford, I wonder if it is the exact same soil on which Constable would have set foot on. 

Gazing at the famous ‘Haywain’ painting scene, I sigh at how much time can change the things around us, how much Nature alters in spite of our best efforts to ‘preserve’ history. Nature is a breathing being; what we are actually doing is an effort to preserve our own infatuations and fascinations – with the past, with art and artists, and with Nature itself. It is a never-ending loop, though; ours is a malleable world where the ‘past’ and the ‘contemporary’ exchange spaces in a blink. For, if constable had been born two centuries later, he would have painted what we more or less see now. Is organic change a subversive kind of destruction? I wonder. 

 

Visual art is a wonderful lens to perceive Nature with. It offers various ways to do so – imitation, representation, interpretation, symbolism, abstraction. What do we do when we witness Nature with our bare eyes? Maybe we do a bit of everything. As a painter myself, both the struggles and the rewards of pinning down the essence of the natural world are close companions. And there’s no knowing how much is truth and half-truth in a painting. Or even how much is truth and half-truth in what we see right in front of us; much less in a representation. 

 

Now that I am walking on a landscape that has been painted and perused and experienced both directly and indirectly a million times, is my experience an amalgamation of indirect influences, expectations, and strangers’ perceptions? A single blade of grass that moves can change an entire composition; a different direction of the wind can alter the tide of emotions. It makes me wish I could walk on a piece of land that is utterly virginal.

 

There is also something within each landscape that whittles out our emotions of familiarity and unfamiliarity. It is not always easy to trace out what triggers these emotions. I think of my home country and I am startled at how soon its streets, its divine dustiness, the intensely lived walls of the houses, its monsoon scents, and decades of my life have become a faint half-forgotten song. And this borrowed country, this borrowed home, at once soothes and bloats me up with a deep sense of anchoring.

 

Carrying on from Flatford to East Bergholt and to Dedham, I walk through fields and woodlands. These are the very sights, which, in Constable’s own words - 'Made me a painter and I am grateful.'

Every corner seems to offer a new vista. Narrow country lanes are the ones most burdened with that strange quality of nostalgia, and they are some of the common yet dear sights of mine. The gentle twist in a path is timeless. It makes you feel like it can belong to any place, any time. Shades of green lurch forward, long lean blades of grass sway, the sand and stones erupt with a mellow glitter in the sunlight and the hidden greyness beckons you ahead, within, beyond. 

I walk the sunlit vale, sit and swallow in the stunning quietude of an isolated hillock sandwiched between nothing but the blue sky on one side and the afternoon sun slant between rows of trees on the other. There is a sombreness in its largeness and a largeness to its silence. Sitting in front of this particular view I drink in the essence of the vale, drop by drop. 

 

Apart from the obvious sights and scenes, I also speculate on what constable could have seen, could have been inspired by, could have sketched a drawing of that is now lost to our times. The waters that rippled in the Stour river at his time might have evaporated and be the cloud over my head now. I mean, what innumerable possibilities exist! 

You can trace a landscape onto paper, but no matter how hard you try, you cannot imitate the perception of a landscape. No other artist or person can ever truly see the exact vision that Constable tried to capture. Landscapes are bottomless cauldrons; every person will pick whatever their palms can grab hold of.

 

On my walk back to Manningtree I pass by Flatford again. I think of the ‘Haywain’ and stop to gaze at the sight once more. It was during my University studying painting in India back in 2007 that I had first read about Constable and seen his paintings printed in my art history books. What serenity! The red roofed house stands on the left corner. The movement of the trees and their leaves give the impression of a gentle breeze, the soft swish in the clouds confirm this. The entire composition in the painting is comparatively uncrowded and open than what I see at now. There is no hay wain crossing the river at this moment, of course; and I wish I could have seen the swish of its wheels as it had arrived on the banks, heard the voice of the man, perhaps pet the little dog, and experience the entirety of Constable’s perception. 

I wonder about the clouds in the painting; how much of it had Constable actually seen and how much was has artistic imagination? 

How much of a landscape is actual nature, how much of it the artist’s energy?  

 

As I walk on leaving behind the hamlet, birds fly over me in the same direction; away from the honeyed orb setting behind us. It takes just a few minutes to step into a completely different world – the world of the now, the unpainted, the possibly sparsely observed. 

It is these little mental voyages that make me realise just how much the old and the fresh incessantly, seamlessly seep through each other while binding humanity with the thread of timelessness. Earth breathes colourless. Upon the vastness of its curved back mountains and trees rise, oceans spit out islands, and this entire world trembles beneath the exclamations and shared poetic symbolisms we incessantly weigh it down with. This strange timeless intimacy amongst humans is of a rare pensive kind; we walk on earth that has been brushed by the feet of several thousand people since centuries, we touch the old barks of trees that has felt the palms of several thousands since decades; we gaze at the ancient sky that has roofed million others since eternity like a wordless hymn wafting by in silence.