The Student
"The Student", first posted here in 2009. A fragment of a larger, discarded painting which was taken from an earlier panel of the same title depicting the figure painting below a map, painted in Noe Street in the 90s, which now hangs in a house in Oregon.
One day in the hardware store, decorating the place with a wire and gesso statue of Ghandi walking to the sea to make salt, hanging a painting of a six foot standing figure of Rhada, another of Khrishna, each with details and surrounded by props, while hanging stylized Madras cloth from the rafters, scissor fringing paper rugs painted as if from Mumbai, growing cut and glued palms and plantings, vines and lotus from the day-glo Ganges, making a replica in cardboard of a nameless ebenist's spice cabinet and colorful pukka side tables, and placing grocery bag fruit in a grocery bag bowl with the intensity of Cezanne (who had no appetite for pastiche), in all spending days creating the subcontinent from Kachenjunga to Kanakumari to make the cave a theatre for the Indian theme progressive dinner a week away, held annually, in the fall, for those ten years along the Tule by my friends and relations, I savored the thought of the chilis coming up from LA, and the naan being baked in Globe, and the cukes for the raita getting sliced on Murray Hill, and gently pulling wet paper around Bepu's thigh, trying to be about my business, I understood, after an hours meditation on the need for more fronds around the vast room and how to angle the fans so they best kept the wine cool and dried the curried sweat that would surely drop down chins from the heat of the meal we would eat, it came to me, in the instant my costume for the party fell together in my mind, that, were the student to ask the master, "Master, how is it done?", the master would answer, "The artist must paint as if painting the walls of the palace of Knossos."
Months after the dinner, when Khrisha sagged with dust and Ghandi had to be repaired before we shared silent goodbyes and he walked out of the cave sold, I found the little painting of the student, a torn fragment of larger painting, in a box of drawings and odd papers not opened since packed in the week the dog and I left San Francisco.
One day in the hardware store, decorating the place with a wire and gesso statue of Ghandi walking to the sea to make salt, hanging a painting of a six foot standing figure of Rhada, another of Khrishna, each with details and surrounded by props, while hanging stylized Madras cloth from the rafters, scissor fringing paper rugs painted as if from Mumbai, growing cut and glued palms and plantings, vines and lotus from the day-glo Ganges, making a replica in cardboard of a nameless ebenist's spice cabinet and colorful pukka side tables, and placing grocery bag fruit in a grocery bag bowl with the intensity of Cezanne (who had no appetite for pastiche), in all spending days creating the subcontinent from Kachenjunga to Kanakumari to make the cave a theatre for the Indian theme progressive dinner a week away, held annually, in the fall, for those ten years along the Tule by my friends and relations, I savored the thought of the chilis coming up from LA, and the naan being baked in Globe, and the cukes for the raita getting sliced on Murray Hill, and gently pulling wet paper around Bepu's thigh, trying to be about my business, I understood, after an hours meditation on the need for more fronds around the vast room and how to angle the fans so they best kept the wine cool and dried the curried sweat that would surely drop down chins from the heat of the meal we would eat, it came to me, in the instant my costume for the party fell together in my mind, that, were the student to ask the master, "Master, how is it done?", the master would answer, "The artist must paint as if painting the walls of the palace of Knossos."
Months after the dinner, when Khrisha sagged with dust and Ghandi had to be repaired before we shared silent goodbyes and he walked out of the cave sold, I found the little painting of the student, a torn fragment of larger painting, in a box of drawings and odd papers not opened since packed in the week the dog and I left San Francisco.
posted by nuuki at May 03, 2014
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