As I teased yesterday, I decided to give my recent series of six acrylic paintings names inspired by David Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas," one of my favorite books.
It's hard to describe what the book is about, because it's about so many things. It's not even a single genre; it is six interconnected stories, told in ring composition, that span time, space, and genre.
--
[Warning: Mild Spoilers ahead.]
There is Adam Ewing, the San Franciscan notary who travels to the Pacific Islands in the 1870s on job assignment from his father-in-law, whose eye-witness accounts of racism, missionary work, ship travel, and unexpected friendships are told through his diary pages...
Which are discovered decades later by Robert Frobisher, a young, bisexual, probably-bipolar, musical genius/college drop-out in 1920s England/Belgium, whose experience working as an amanuensis for an aging composer is told through letters written to his friend Sixsmith...
Which are read decades later by Luisa Rey, a journalist desperate to uncover the truth about the dangerous corruption of power companies in 1970s California, whose story is told as a manuscript for a detective novel...
Which was submitted for publication decades later to one Timothy Cavendish, an elderly publisher who is coerced into imprisonment in an old folks' home in contemporary England and who later spins his tale of woe into his own manuscript-turned-Hollywood-Blockbuster...
Which is watched decades later by Sonmi, a clone-waitress shoved into a revolution by Unionists eager to expose the flaws of the current government in the futuristic city of Neo-Seoul, whose account is recorded by an Archivist...
Which is used as a sacred text for the dawn of a new religion in a post-apocalyptic Cannibal-infested dystopian Pacific Island future inhabited by one adolescent Zachry and a visiting woman from another tribe.
--
Though each section is its own story, they are also clearly tied together, with some characters (Sixsmith in particular) popping up in more than one chapter (Frobisher's and Luisa Rey's chapters, in the case of Sixsmith).
It's a brilliant (though sometimes confusing) piece of literature, and I highly recommend taking the time to read it. And, if you enjoy it - David Mitchell has several other books he's written that also tie into each other, and into Cloud Atlas. The same characters and themes keep recurring; by now he has created a veritable "David Mitchell Universe." (I'm actually in the process of reading through all of his novels in chronological order (by publishing date); when I'm finished, I intend to write a blog post about this comprehensive universe and some of my favorite ideas/quotes from his oeuvre.)
If you don't have time to read the book, however, Cloud Atlas is also a pretty great movie (starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, and others). I actually saw the movie first; which I think helped my understanding of the book, even though there are some clear differences between the two.
--
In any case, because I enjoy Cloud Atlas so much and reread it for the third time recently, it's themes and characters were on my mind as I worked on these six paintings. The imagery of the paintings, of course, has little to do directly with the subject of Cloud Atlas; my paintings are based on photographs taken of flowers, which I manipulated/flattened in Photoshop, added patterns to, and traced and painted on acrylic paper. But there are six of them, just as there are six stories in Cloud Atlas, and in trying to figure out what to title my paintings, I started wondering which paintings might relate best to which Cloud Atlas chapters.
Here are the six finished acrylic paintings:
(These paintings are available for purchase through my Etsy store, here.)
--
Let's go one by one through these paintings and their titles.
First, "The Eyes of Friends," inspired by the chapters featuring Adam Ewing. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
I rather thought some of the impatiens looked like they "eyes" in the blue spots of their centers, and so was drawn to Adam Ewing for the naming of this painting. Impatiens represent "motherly love" - and though there are no mothers among Ewing's all-male shipmates, he does find out which friends he can trust to take care of him when he falls violently ill.
Some great quotes from the two Adam Ewing chapters:
“I seen too much o' the world, I ain't good slave.”
“Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes more strong.”
“That's what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats' nests & rubble.”
“Wolves don't sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! ...True 'intellectual courage' is to dispense with these fig leafs & admit all people are predatory.”
“No state of tyranny reigns forever.”
“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”
“...only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
--
Next is "A Spent Firework," inspired by the chapters featuring Robert Frobisher. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This one was a no-brainer. This sunflower painting is the only one in this series of six that features only one flower (instead of several); that symbolism coupled with its general shape and flamboyant vibrancy led me to Frobisher's story for title inspiration. It literally looks like a firework.
Some great quotes from the two Robert Frobisher chapters:
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
“Fear can clear the mind as well as cloud it.”
“How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.”
“Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
“...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.”
“Another war is always coming...They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will.”
“...reworking my 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color.”
“Composers draw inspiration from their environments.”
“Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I se enow. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so."
“Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.”
“The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.”
“Rome'll decline and fall again.”
“We do not stay dead long.”
--
Next is "An Infinite Matryoshka Doll," inspired by the chapters featuring Luisa Rey. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
The phlox plant, which keeps its blossoms tightly compacted and close to its stem, indeed reminded me of a Russian matryoshka doll with its repeating instances of the same (but slightly different) flower. In addition, this being based on a photograph taken in Florence, got me thinking about cycles of art history. The Florentine "Renaissance," though named for a "rebirth," harkened back to the Classical styles of the past.
Some great quotes from the two Luisa Rey chapters:
“Anything is true if enough people believe it is.”
“The media... is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”
“It's a wise soul who can distinguish traps from opportunities.”
“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents)...”
“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
“What if trying to avoid the future is what triggers it all?”
“It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”
“Truth doesn't care who discovers it.”
--
Next is "Toppling Dominoes," inspired by the chapters featuring Timothy Cavendish. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This painting is the one with the fewest moments of yellow. The majority of the piece is in the blue midtone range, and the little shots of yellow and splotches of the dark background pop forward, looking almost like cascading or tumbling items caught in a blue river. The little black points that congregate at the center of each coneflower similarly remind me of the pips on dominoes. Furthermore, coneflowers symbolize strength and healing - and through the course of his chapters, Cavendish finds himself incarcerated with nurses attempting to tend to his sickness of old age, desperate to find the strength/cunning within him to escape.
Some great quotes from the two Timothy Cavendish chapters:
“We cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters.”
“Conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of your years, you have a warm, dry car driven by a loved one - or a hired one, it matters not - to take you home.”
“You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you.”
“I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina.”
“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
“Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary...its victory is assured.”
“...plan was a high-risk sequence of toppling dominoes.”
“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
--
Next is "Truths & Mistruths," inspired by the chapters featuring Sonmi. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This is one of the more abstract paintings in this series (tied, I think, with "Toppling Dominoes," above). It is so chaotic that if one did not know it was based on a photograph of snapdragons growing on their stalks, one might think it was something else altogether - something not even floral. Sonmi's chapters are similarly chaotic - there is much talk of "truth" and what really is or isn't real. Her answers to the Archivist's questions alternatively resemble a box of puzzle pieces and a completed Jigsaw puzzle.
Some great quotes from the two Sonmi chapters:
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”
“You must create Catechisms of your own.”
“Most of science's holy grails are discovered by accident, in unexpected places.”
“One's environment is a key to one's identity.”
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
“Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
“No crisis is insuperable if people cooperate.”
“...ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only 'rights,' the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
“No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.”
--
Finally, "This Busted World," inspired by the chapter featuring Zachry. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
Though Zachry lives in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world, there is still hope for the future - a rebirth, a reawakening, a "rising from the ashes." In the language of flower symbolism, Black-Eyed Susans represent encouragement. I love the way the yellow petals rise out from the black and blue background in this painting; as well as the symbolism of their being taken from a photograph of landscaping along the Riverwalk in Detroit, Michigan - a city who has seen hard times lately, but whose city motto is 'We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes.'
Some great quotes from the one (long) Zachry chapter:
“Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all!”
“...the gone-lifes outnumber the now-lifes like leafs outnumber trees.”
“The learnin' mind is the livin' mind... an' any sort o' Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new, high Smart or low.”
“So many feelin's I'd got I din't have room 'nuff for 'em. Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.”
“We Old Uns was sick with Smart an' the Fall was our cure.”
“There ain't no journey what don't change you some.”
“In our busted world the right thing ain't always possible.”
“Souls cross the skies o' time...like clouds crossin' skies o' the world.”
It's hard to describe what the book is about, because it's about so many things. It's not even a single genre; it is six interconnected stories, told in ring composition, that span time, space, and genre.
--
There is Adam Ewing, the San Franciscan notary who travels to the Pacific Islands in the 1870s on job assignment from his father-in-law, whose eye-witness accounts of racism, missionary work, ship travel, and unexpected friendships are told through his diary pages...
Which are discovered decades later by Robert Frobisher, a young, bisexual, probably-bipolar, musical genius/college drop-out in 1920s England/Belgium, whose experience working as an amanuensis for an aging composer is told through letters written to his friend Sixsmith...
Which are read decades later by Luisa Rey, a journalist desperate to uncover the truth about the dangerous corruption of power companies in 1970s California, whose story is told as a manuscript for a detective novel...
Which was submitted for publication decades later to one Timothy Cavendish, an elderly publisher who is coerced into imprisonment in an old folks' home in contemporary England and who later spins his tale of woe into his own manuscript-turned-Hollywood-Blockbuster...
Which is watched decades later by Sonmi, a clone-waitress shoved into a revolution by Unionists eager to expose the flaws of the current government in the futuristic city of Neo-Seoul, whose account is recorded by an Archivist...
Which is used as a sacred text for the dawn of a new religion in a post-apocalyptic Cannibal-infested dystopian Pacific Island future inhabited by one adolescent Zachry and a visiting woman from another tribe.
--
Though each section is its own story, they are also clearly tied together, with some characters (Sixsmith in particular) popping up in more than one chapter (Frobisher's and Luisa Rey's chapters, in the case of Sixsmith).
It's a brilliant (though sometimes confusing) piece of literature, and I highly recommend taking the time to read it. And, if you enjoy it - David Mitchell has several other books he's written that also tie into each other, and into Cloud Atlas. The same characters and themes keep recurring; by now he has created a veritable "David Mitchell Universe." (I'm actually in the process of reading through all of his novels in chronological order (by publishing date); when I'm finished, I intend to write a blog post about this comprehensive universe and some of my favorite ideas/quotes from his oeuvre.)
If you don't have time to read the book, however, Cloud Atlas is also a pretty great movie (starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, and others). I actually saw the movie first; which I think helped my understanding of the book, even though there are some clear differences between the two.
--
In any case, because I enjoy Cloud Atlas so much and reread it for the third time recently, it's themes and characters were on my mind as I worked on these six paintings. The imagery of the paintings, of course, has little to do directly with the subject of Cloud Atlas; my paintings are based on photographs taken of flowers, which I manipulated/flattened in Photoshop, added patterns to, and traced and painted on acrylic paper. But there are six of them, just as there are six stories in Cloud Atlas, and in trying to figure out what to title my paintings, I started wondering which paintings might relate best to which Cloud Atlas chapters.
Here are the six finished acrylic paintings:
(These paintings are available for purchase through my Etsy store, here.)
--
Let's go one by one through these paintings and their titles.
First, "The Eyes of Friends," inspired by the chapters featuring Adam Ewing. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
I rather thought some of the impatiens looked like they "eyes" in the blue spots of their centers, and so was drawn to Adam Ewing for the naming of this painting. Impatiens represent "motherly love" - and though there are no mothers among Ewing's all-male shipmates, he does find out which friends he can trust to take care of him when he falls violently ill.
Some great quotes from the two Adam Ewing chapters:
“I seen too much o' the world, I ain't good slave.”
“Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes more strong.”
“That's what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats' nests & rubble.”
“Wolves don't sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! ...True 'intellectual courage' is to dispense with these fig leafs & admit all people are predatory.”
“No state of tyranny reigns forever.”
“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”
“...only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
--
Next is "A Spent Firework," inspired by the chapters featuring Robert Frobisher. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This one was a no-brainer. This sunflower painting is the only one in this series of six that features only one flower (instead of several); that symbolism coupled with its general shape and flamboyant vibrancy led me to Frobisher's story for title inspiration. It literally looks like a firework.
Some great quotes from the two Robert Frobisher chapters:
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
“Fear can clear the mind as well as cloud it.”
“How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.”
“Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
“...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.”
“Another war is always coming...They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will.”
“...reworking my 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color.”
“Composers draw inspiration from their environments.”
“Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I se enow. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so."
“Writing is such a damn lonely sickness.”
“The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken.”
“Rome'll decline and fall again.”
“We do not stay dead long.”
--
Next is "An Infinite Matryoshka Doll," inspired by the chapters featuring Luisa Rey. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
The phlox plant, which keeps its blossoms tightly compacted and close to its stem, indeed reminded me of a Russian matryoshka doll with its repeating instances of the same (but slightly different) flower. In addition, this being based on a photograph taken in Florence, got me thinking about cycles of art history. The Florentine "Renaissance," though named for a "rebirth," harkened back to the Classical styles of the past.
Some great quotes from the two Luisa Rey chapters:
“Anything is true if enough people believe it is.”
“The media... is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”
“It's a wise soul who can distinguish traps from opportunities.”
“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents)...”
“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
“What if trying to avoid the future is what triggers it all?”
“It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”
“Truth doesn't care who discovers it.”
--
Next is "Toppling Dominoes," inspired by the chapters featuring Timothy Cavendish. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This painting is the one with the fewest moments of yellow. The majority of the piece is in the blue midtone range, and the little shots of yellow and splotches of the dark background pop forward, looking almost like cascading or tumbling items caught in a blue river. The little black points that congregate at the center of each coneflower similarly remind me of the pips on dominoes. Furthermore, coneflowers symbolize strength and healing - and through the course of his chapters, Cavendish finds himself incarcerated with nurses attempting to tend to his sickness of old age, desperate to find the strength/cunning within him to escape.
Some great quotes from the two Timothy Cavendish chapters:
“We cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters.”
“Conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of your years, you have a warm, dry car driven by a loved one - or a hired one, it matters not - to take you home.”
“You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you.”
“I recall a yesterday and see a tomorrow. Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina.”
“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”
“Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary...its victory is assured.”
“...plan was a high-risk sequence of toppling dominoes.”
“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
--
Next is "Truths & Mistruths," inspired by the chapters featuring Sonmi. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
This is one of the more abstract paintings in this series (tied, I think, with "Toppling Dominoes," above). It is so chaotic that if one did not know it was based on a photograph of snapdragons growing on their stalks, one might think it was something else altogether - something not even floral. Sonmi's chapters are similarly chaotic - there is much talk of "truth" and what really is or isn't real. Her answers to the Archivist's questions alternatively resemble a box of puzzle pieces and a completed Jigsaw puzzle.
Some great quotes from the two Sonmi chapters:
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”
“You must create Catechisms of your own.”
“Most of science's holy grails are discovered by accident, in unexpected places.”
“One's environment is a key to one's identity.”
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
“Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
“No crisis is insuperable if people cooperate.”
“...ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only 'rights,' the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
“No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.”
--
Finally, "This Busted World," inspired by the chapter featuring Zachry. (This painting is available for purchase here.)
Though Zachry lives in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world, there is still hope for the future - a rebirth, a reawakening, a "rising from the ashes." In the language of flower symbolism, Black-Eyed Susans represent encouragement. I love the way the yellow petals rise out from the black and blue background in this painting; as well as the symbolism of their being taken from a photograph of landscaping along the Riverwalk in Detroit, Michigan - a city who has seen hard times lately, but whose city motto is 'We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes.'
Some great quotes from the one (long) Zachry chapter:
“Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all!”
“...the gone-lifes outnumber the now-lifes like leafs outnumber trees.”
“The learnin' mind is the livin' mind... an' any sort o' Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new, high Smart or low.”
“So many feelin's I'd got I din't have room 'nuff for 'em. Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.”
“We Old Uns was sick with Smart an' the Fall was our cure.”
“There ain't no journey what don't change you some.”
“In our busted world the right thing ain't always possible.”
“Souls cross the skies o' time...like clouds crossin' skies o' the world.”
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