Art Line … An old book

It was painted nearly two years ago and actually took quite a while to complete.

The artist (Francois Benade) fought to achieve the colours he required, a new addition here and a little more white there, without making it look ”muddy” in the process.

I often stood behind him and watched him as he appeared to carve out the background with one colour and raise the relief areas with a few more mixtures of lighter hues.

I asked him why he had a yellow/gold tinge on the top left corner, for which he used Indian yellow, a very powerful colour.

His answer was: “When you look up at the window in the late afternoon, the sun is coloured and it throws this orange sort of colour down onto my book, but it only catches the corner before it is gone.

“See how the colour softly bounces onto the other raised sections of the cover?”

Then I wanted to know what the dull white smudge at the bottom left hand side of the book was; if in fact it might be a smudge.

He looked at me as if I was completely naïve, and said: “How do you remove a book from a top shelf, when it is slotted in with other books.

“I have watched my grandfather remove his favourite books and all of them have this smudge where the book’s colouring has worn off.”

Well, that said it all, I had no further questions.

Now comes the crunch: this young man, when he began this painting, was all of 10 years old and he completed it when he was 11.

His father often came to fetch him and stood shaking his head at the painting while my little artist was busy.

He had paint everywhere, in his hair and on his clothes.

You could not make out the colours in the tubes unless you opened them, as they were so badly matted with every other colour in his box.

The painting itself, when nearing completion, was also a mess; the whole surround was a myriad of smudges of other colours.

It took some convincing of the father that he should not throw a bad effort in the shed.

I begged that the youngster be given another week and a longer period, which his father agreed to.

Then the little artist and I sat down and discussed the procedure of cleaning up, because the basic image of the artwork was already there.

He had an idea, and that was to work on his own, in another room.

I agreed and here is the result.

It is an absolutely delightful painting, full of meaning to this young man, now 12 years old.

He said painting taught him patience, endurance and the understanding that all is never lost in an oil painting.