Ideas for painting

Thinking of ideas for painting is something more or less like the graphs of stock markets for me. Sometimes I am at an all time high with so many ideas that I have to narrow them down to focus on one. On the other hand, there are days when I have to look at art from different artists to get inspired and get out of my creativity block. There are also times when I just keep observing things around: a shower cap, a chair, a leaf, a pile of books, anything inspires me to come up with an idea. The list is endless. Sometimes, just doodling on a paper leads me to an interesting idea.

Another very strange way of getting ideas for painting is when I am just about to sleep and some forms emerge in my mind. It’s strange as I might be struggling whole day coming up with an idea and it strikes right at the time when I assume my day to be over. So, as they say, never lose hope. The ray of light is just around the corner.

An idea that led me to many paintings also came when I was almost half asleep. A thought that had influenced me was in my mind for quite some time. It was a simple thought that almost all of us have heard. It’s “what goes around, comes around”. In other words, “what you sow, so shall you reap.” Somehow whenever I thought of the life that I already lived, I always felt connected to this thought. I also found it applicable to other people’s lives.

Putting the thoughts on paper using pen and ink medium:

I was so eager to make paintings representing this mystical thought. Two layouts for this idea came to my mind. Pen and ink on paper was the medium I used before I tried this painting with oils. It was a good experience to make finished paintings using pen and ink too. I felt so connected to it. More on this medium later. Let me just show these paintings:

Explanation of the idea:

As can be seen in both the paintings, there are sharp lines and there are soft curves in the main form. There are sharp triangles and soft leaves. I used all these different forms to represent bad and good deeds of our lives. As can be seen, they all are evenly distributed. If some sharp/ soft line emerged at the top, it also came back at the bottom.  In a similar way, whatever good or bad we do in our life, it comes back to us in some way at some later stage of life.

 This is a truth that we experience despite of all the hurdles and opportunities of our life. The hurdles and opportunities are shown in the back ground by the sticks and rings respectively. What goes around comes around can also be related to the saying that “the more you give, the more you receive”. I represented this give, receive theorem by a very thick curved white line running throughout the main form in the two paintings.

My last thoughts on above paintings:

So, that’s the meaning of these two paintings which might seem incomprehensible at first glance. Sometimes even I wonder that how such complicated ideas for painting occurred to me just before sleeping. Well, let’s just say –“truth is stranger than fiction”.