I’ll just say it. I love what load-shedding restores – a cease and desist between our ambition and the night. I love how silent it gets – like we’ve gone back in time. I hear the darkness, the crickets serenading the stars. All that glorious stillness reawakens our all too easily forgotten permission to stop.
ORIGINAL COPY POSTED ON INSTAGRAM DURING THE CHALLENGE
Last night, mid-painting, the power cut out again. Ordinarily, I would have stopped painting because I’d rather have eyesight than hindsight. This time, I didn’t. I’d just started and had all this fresh, wet globby paint.
And, truthfully, I love load shedding. I love how silent it gets – like we’ve gone back in time. You can almost hear the dull hum of refrigeration and pulsing energy drop.
You can hear the darkness, the stars. All of it feels like a soft hug that brings you back to yourself. It makes for great painting fodder.
But of course, it produced a style all of its own. While this is not quite as bittersweet as Monet’s transition into deep impressionism – he lost most of his sight by the end of his career so he saw those waterlilies the way he painted them – I do feel like I’ve tapped into a different kind of power in the darkness. 👆🏼Motion to create an SA art style called ‘Eskomism’ – a candlelight induced watery artform? Say I.
(artist retains all rights to print reproductions of this painting)
Inspiration image: artist’s own/ common license image