PAUSE (II)

Will be represented by Tao Gallery, Mumbai

Scroll down to see how this piece looks in a room

This is part of a series. I titled this “Pause” for several reasons.

I’ve been working on this during the great Pause of our time, the pandemic.

Besides unpleasant pauses imposed on us, voluntary pauses can be pleasant and are often necessary. A break implies a harder screeching stop, but a pause can be a gentle gliding one, enough to collect thoughts and plan the next course. I’ve been guilty of skipping necessary pauses for quite a while, so I value them immensely.

Besides that, one of my favourite essays, “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus comes to mind as it often does. Camus writes of Sisyphus trudging uphill with a stone, time after time, for eternity. Being a human with a consciousness, he, Sisyphus, is well aware of his plight. Camus’ existentialist philosophy revolves around acknowledging morbid reality, but choosing to “revolt",” prioritising his “freedom” and his “passion.”

He writes: “At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain. It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”

That pause, and the possibilities for what happens in it, interests me greatly too.

16h X 16w x 0.75d (inches); acrylic, ink, linen, silk, oil paint on a wood-backed canvas.