The Hornbill Mural, Borneo
Following on from our stay on Pulau Tuba, we
spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, where we pretty much exhausted what the
city has to offer. We goggled at the Petronas Towers in daylight,
gorged ourselves on terrific street food, and then goggled at the Petronas
Towers at night. Then we flew to Borneo.
We were met in Kuching by John - an affable Malaysian man
- who drove us to his modest beach resort, near the small town of Lundu.
The place was yet to open to the public. It had
been a work in progress for three years - and the end was clearly in sight.
There was smart-looking guest accommodation, a pool, a covered dining area
overlooking the sea, and a large service kitchen. There was a difficult and
neurotic dog called Bonnie, who had been rescued from her previous owner, who
had abused and neglected her. As a result of her experience, she harboured a
strong antipathy for “local people”, but she was fine with westerners. She
spent her days attached to a long tether in the middle of the dining area, next
to the bar, near the kitchen.
There were five volunteers already in residence
when we arrived. There were also workmen roaming around. It seemed “busy” after
our time spent on Pulau Tuba. I knew Madelene felt that too.
It’s rather unfashionable and antisocial to
admit that you don’t want to be around “other people”; that you want to be the “only”
volunteers. But that’s about the truth of it. Arriving in this nexus of
activity (as it struck us at the time), we were instantly lovesick for the
perfectly quiet, idyllic beach life we had once enjoyed, on that tiny Malaysian
island.
Our nostalgia for those bygone days was
reinforced when we went upstairs to check out our quarters. We discovered a
steel bunk bed furnished with one rather mean and unhygienic-looking mattress,
a non-functional air conditioner, and a window overlooking the car park. It
drew unfavourable comparisons with our beach house in Pulau Tuba, which was
open to the sea breeze.
Madelene sat down on the creaking bed springs,
and I could see she was far from thrilled by the conditions.
I shared her “Oh-god-what-are-we-doing-here”
snap first impression, but I was also minded that first impressions are
notoriously misleading. I figured, on balance, that we would settle in OK.
Our fellow volunteers were friendly enough.
There was a French couple - Juliet and Julian - who had been helping out at the
resort for a month. There was an English couple - Olivia and Darren - who had
been there for five days. And there was an Englishman - Ben - who had arrived
with the English couple.
Ben was studying biomedical engineering at
Imperial College, London. The French couple and the English couple worked in
hospitality. Darren was a chef, so he was in charge of the kitchen.
They said we could chip in to their combined
food fund, if we wished, and partake of Darren’s professional-grade cooking.
However, Madelene is allergic to various things, and anyway, we had brought our
own supply of food with us. It consisted primarily of spaghetti, mushroom soup
and sardines.
It meant that mine and Madelene’s kitchen
battles were set to continue.
Whereas the previous battleground, on Pulau
Tuba, had been breakfast, this time – it was dinner. Specifically – spaghetti
was the flashpoint.
Madelene likes to break the spaghetti in half
and dump it into cold unsalted water, and extract it before it is properly
cooked. Then she showers it under the cold tap.
I like to put the unbroken spaghetti into
boiling salted water, and extract it when it is al dente. Then I stir it with a smidgen of olive oil before serving
– for flavour, and to prevent it getting tangled. To make sure the spaghetti is
cooked properly, I always taste it before emptying the whole lot into the
colander.
Madelene would watch me trying to extract a
lonely noodle, wearing a disapproving expression, as though I was engaged in
some perverse and arcane ritual.
“I never taste the spaghetti,” she would tell
me.
“Yes,” I would reply. “That’s why it ends up
undercooked.”
We would have a conversation, which went like
this:
Me: “Make sure you cook the spaghetti
properly.”
Her: “I do
cook the spaghetti properly, Matthew. I cook it properly for me.”
Me: “What I mean is, don’t undercook it.”
Her: “I don’t undercook it. I like it to have some bite.”
Me: “That means al dente, not undercooked…”
Her: [sighs] “We just like to have it
differently. That doesn’t mean your way is right.”
Me: “Try telling that to an Italian!” …etcetera.
I think it was the second evening of our stay
at the beach resort. The rest of the volunteer group were tucking into some
delicious-looking food that Darren had spent about an hour and a half on, and I
was eating spaghetti that was very definitely undercooked. Perched atop the
starchy unyielding mass were the contents of a tin of sardines. (Madelene was
still in the kitchen, prising the lid off a tin of mushroom soup, which she was
about to dump onto her own spaghetti.)
Olivia cast a dubious glance in my direction
from across the table and asked:
“So, um, do you like cooking, Matthew?”
It was a priceless moment. I can’t remember
what I choked out in response.
*
We were volunteering our time and energy, in
exchange for a roof over our heads, under the benign auspices of Willie, the
project manager. He was another affable Malaysian, charged with overseeing the
final push, to get the place open to the public.
The construction phase was over, but there was
plenty of tidying up and finishing-off-jobs left to do. Plus, a computer system
still needed to be installed, along with all the other stuff vital to the running
of a bar, restaurant and hotel.
It was decided to build a beach resort because
revenue was needed to help finance a wildlife conservation centre in Matang,
which is a few miles away. It is a home to orang-utans and other threatened
species, native to Borneo. The wildlife centre is run by Leo, an Englishman who
has been involved in local conservation efforts for the last twenty-five years,
and who has had an active role in the construction of the resort. John is the
owner of the resort, and he handles the business side of things.
To keep costs down, they have relied on the
help of volunteers and local tradespeople to build everything on the site. This
is why the project has taken three years to get to this point. The land is
rented to the tune of ten thousand US Dollars a year, which has contributed to
a financial black hole, which must be cleared before the business can make
money. The pressure is therefore on (and has been on for some time) to get the
place open to the public.
At the time of our arrival, the deadline for
opening was less than a month away – which looked ambitious, considering the work
that remained to be done. Because, while the place looked superficially OK, there
was really a hell of a lot still to do.
Much of this could be attributed to slapdash
construction methods, and disorganised working practices – which is no
reflection on Willie’s project management, I should say. He was drafted in to
get the project on-track, which he has more-or-less achieved, thanks to his
dedication, and hard work.
Nevertheless, evidence abounds of an amateurish
approach to construction. It is commonly said that there is hardly a
right-angle to be found anywhere, which may be an exaggeration, but which reflects
the fine variety of geometries on offer.
Concrete is splattered over walls, floors and
tiles. Certainly the worst menial job – in the eyes of this volunteer, at least
– is chiselling this stuff off. It’s an example of the countless man hours that
are lost, trying to rectify a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Time is wasted because of the piecemeal
approach to building, and installation. The plasterer can’t finish plastering,
because the electrician hasn’t finished wiring. The plumber can’t finish plumbing,
because the sinks haven’t been installed. Etcetera. These are the standard
problems, familiar to anyone who has ever been involved in a project like this.
I am in a fortunate position, because I am here
mainly for my skills as an artist, rather than a concrete-scraper.
On our arrival, John showed me a large wall
behind what will eventually be the reception desk. He wanted me to paint a
mural on it, and he was happy to leave the subject matter up to me.
It was a fabulous canvas for a wall-muralist.
Just like all the other walls, it had recently been painted white. The plaster
was in perfect condition. It was perhaps twenty-five feet long, by about eight
feet high – meaning the top bits would be within easy reach if I stood on a
chair. There would be no ladders required for this job.
Its prime location meant it would be seen by
every visitor to the resort.
It was a great opportunity. The question was –
what would I paint?
A nature theme was obvious, given the
connection to wildlife conservation. It would need to be a local creature, of
course, indigenous to Borneo.
There was only one serious candidate, which
sprang, fully-feathered, into my mind: a hornbill.
They are bold, cartoonish birds, which makes
them a perfect fit for my preferred style of painting.
I pictured the bird perched on a tree branch in
a jungle setting. The bird would be in the centre of the rectangle, and jungle
foliage would creep in at the sides. I was happy to leave plenty of white
space, which would echo the minimalist décor found elsewhere.
John was happy with the idea, when I told him,
while Leo was quite cool, at first. He liked the clean white walls, and I had
the impression that John was the main flag-waver for the mural-painting.
I agreed with Leo – I liked the white walls
too. But I also liked the idea of a big, bold painting behind the reception
desk – my painting – which would stand out all the more, thanks to those white
walls.
I showed him the wall art I did on Pulau Tuba –
and at the children’s home, back in the UK. I outlined my vision. And after a
bit of chin-stroking, I got the all-clear.
“Go for it,” he told me.
I was very happy. I was determined to take my
time with this one, and create something memorable. Madelene and I were
planning to stay for around a month before moving on, so there should be no reason
to get into a panic as we scrambled to meet an unrealistic deadline – as
happened last time.
There were just a couple of issues…
Firstly, there wasn’t a lot to do at the resort. There was the beach,
of course, which was lovely – although the shallow sea made swimming difficult,
or impossible, except at high tide.
The nearest town, Lundu, was fifteen minutes
away by motor scooter, and there was one available for Madelene, myself, and
the other volunteers, to use when we needed to replenish supplies. It was a beast
of a thing – large and wallowy – with brakes that came and went as they
pleased. It was exceedingly comfortable, however.
I was happy with the quiet, and the lack of
distractions. Theoretically, this would give me the chance I needed, to catch
up with some travel writing.
Plus, of course, I had a gigantic wall mural to
paint.
The situation was different for Madelene. She
was stuck with the menial, thoroughly unsexy jobs – like cleaning, gardening,
lugging things around, and chipping away at hardened splatters of concrete. She
wasn’t writing a travel book; hell, she wasn’t even reading a book. I could see from her demeanour that boredom was a
clear and present threat.
The second issue…
The other volunteers had formed a tight group. They
tended to gather around the big dining table near the kitchen, and talk - a lot. No harm in this, of course,
except - Madelene tended to find herself frozen out of conversations.
Her English is good, but the rapid-fire group
chat, with its deployment of unfamiliar words, was leaving her behind.
“How would you like it,” she asked me, “if you
had to sit around listening to people speak Swedish
all the time?”
I could see her point. In a sense, it was one
of those intractable problems: you can hardly expect people to change their
conversational style, for the benefit of one person. And you can’t expect
everyone to start speaking Swedish. For better or worse, English has long
established itself as the go-to international language; blame our murderous
colonial heritage.
Madelene’s way of dealing with it was to
isolate herself from the group. I gently tried to persuade her in the other
direction, because I could see the risks inherent to this strategy. It was
possible that we would be sharing a roof with our fellow volunteers for several
weeks – which could feel like a lifetime, if things became awkward. And they would become awkward, if basic etiquette
was not observed.
My advice was: just sit with them, every so
often. Perhaps not during every social flare-up that occurred throughout the
day – because there were many. There was breakfast, post-breakfast, post-work /
pre-lunch, lunch, post-lunch, dinner, and then the evenings were devoted to
more of the same. It was too much for me, that’s for sure, but still, you
really have to make the effort, when you’re part of a group, in a place like
this.
Otherwise, casual separation becomes active
avoidance. Sharing a room becomes painfully awkward. The experience becomes
hellish, so it’s best to avoid it starting in the first place.
The best approach is to be mindful of the group
dynamics – whatever they happen to be – and to not stray too far from the
existing framework. It puts everyone at ease, and – not inconsequentially – it
makes life easier for you.
Madelene was receptive to my anthropological
waffling, but still, I could see she wasn’t happy, and I could understand why.
There was an a-symmetry to our predicament.
I had been traveling for ten months, and my
money was running low. Indeed, my financial health was practically flat-lining.
I needed the work exchange programme,
because without it, I would be attending that great gig in the sky: a budget
flight home.
And of course – since I had discovered how
in-demand wall muralists seem to be in SE Asia (and, who knows, maybe around
the world), I wanted to do the work exchange. It was perfect for me, and I wished I had discovered it sooner. How much
money would I have saved in Sri Lanka and India had I been wall muralising, and
how much more fruitful would my travel experience have been?
Madelene didn’t
need the work exchange. She had spent six months working in her native
Sweden while I had been traveling around India. She had plenty of money saved
up – she wanted a holiday, god damn it – and who can blame her? She didn’t want
to be scrubbing floors, and weeding in the glare of the tropical sun, and
chipping away at splatters of concrete left behind by incompetent tradesmen.
She didn’t want to be sitting around, bored out of her skull, listening to
people blathering on interminably in English.
So I conceived of an idea that I hoped would improve matters: we would work on
the wall mural together.
Of course! And why not? We worked on the last
one together – the giant abstract on the side of the timber house, on the
Malaysian island of Pulau Tuba. Indeed, on that occasion, Madelene came to my
rescue, because without her help, I couldn’t have finished the mural in time –
thanks to our diabolical host, who decided to kick us off the island with just
three days’ notice, when the painting was a week away from completion.
Madelene was happy to team-up again. It offered
her a neat escape from the menial labour. Importantly, it gave her a reason to be here – beyond just
hanging around, waiting for me to get the wall mural finished.
I figured – I would put in the first layer of
paint, and then Madelene could put in the second layer. It would save us from
getting in each other’s way, and the onerous decisions, about which colours to
use, would already have been made.
Before I could start painting, however, I had
the drawing to do.
Sketching out the design, in pencil, was a
luxury unavailable to me on the last job. The walrus mural went up on a red exterior
wall, and the abstract went up on rough timber cladding. Neither would have been
receptive to pencil marks. Instead, I used white paint to roughly mark out my
designs, before filling in the shapes with colour, and finally working in the
outlines with black paint.
The designs reflected this working method. They
relied on big, bold shapes, and eschewed intricacy. This time, it would be
different. The big, bold shapes would be there – but the detail would be there
too.
The bird was to be situated in a jungle
setting. This meant painting foliage, which requires careful work. It is a pain
in the arse, to be honest, and the kind of thing I usually avoid, but I knew it
would be worth it in the end. The fact is – the vision had presented itself to
me, and I had little choice but to translate that into life, as faithfully and
as energetically as I could.
*
After a couple of days, the drawing was
finished, and John had arrived with the paint – as promised. He had executed
the order faithfully. I had seven one-litre tins of emulsion, comprising black,
white, red, yellow, brown, plus two shades of green.
I had specified two shades of green because I
wanted a diverse colour palette for the leaves and the jungle plants. The
challenge was, to recreate a sense of
the Bornean rainforest, without overworking the design. For that, you need a
lot of plants, and leaves, and trailing vines, and long grasses, and you need
plenty of different greens – but not too many.
And the shapes of the leaves and the
long grasses are incredibly important, as are the spaces between them. The colours are important. It has to look
natural.
Thankfully, the greens he selected were perfect
for my requirements: I had a lovely, bright, lime green, and a more subdued
grass green. With those two shades, I was confident I could mix a wide variety
of jungle hues – with the help of the white, the yellow, and the black.
The brown would do for the tree, and the jungle
vines. The red would mix with the yellow, to create the fiery shades for the
bird’s horn, and its beak.
*
In addition to painting the wall mural, I
wanted to make a video.
It’s something I had wanted to do for a while:
make a time-lapse of one of my painting projects. For the walrus mural on Pulau
Tuba, Madelene set up her mobile phone, to make a couple of short videos. One
of them shows me filling in the eyes of mummy and daddy walrus, and the two
juveniles.
I wanted more, however. I wanted a time-lapse
that would run from the beginning of a project, to the end. It’s the kind of
thing that goes down a stink on YouTube, which I figured might direct some traffic
to my website.
And, y’know, it looks cool, and I like showing
off.
There were some practical challenges to
overcome. First, where do you put the camera? Either it remains in the same
spot for the duration of the project – which may take several days – or, if it
is moved, it must be returned to exactly
that spot.
What kind of camera do you use? If it is a
mobile phone, all of its functions must be subordinated to the task of making
the video. That means no tweeting, Googling, or anything else.
Will the camera be plugged-in? And if so, will
people trip over the power cable? Will it be protected from the weather? How
much data will the on-board memory store, before it has to be emptied out…?
Just some of the considerations.
Since my iPhone had been incapacitated by
seawater on my 33rd birthday, I only had one option: to use my Nikon
B700 bridge camera. A quick Google search revealed that it did, in fact, do
time-lapse videos – along with many other things, which I knew nothing about.
The conditions were pretty good for making the
time-lapse.
For a start, this wall mural was indoors – so
no worries about the capricious tropical weather gods. For another, the
reception counter was already installed, and made for a very useful bench, on
which I could lay out my paints, my laptop, my Boom2 wireless speaker, and my
camera.
The counter was rather too close to the wall I
would be working on – which struck me as a problem at first. It meant I would have
to position the camera at one end, rather than have it square-on in the middle,
which would have been ideal. The long rectangular shape of my canvas meant a degree
of foreshortening was inevitable.
However, when I set the camera up, I decided it
looked fine. The wide-angle lens did a fair job of capturing the wall space,
minus three of the four corners.
There were a few time-lapse options installed
in the camera, and I chose the one that seemed to fit my needs best:
“Cityscape” would take one picture every twelve seconds, for fifty minutes.
Once the fifty minutes were up, a simple button press would set the thing going
for another fifty minutes.
Played back at twenty-five frames per second, I
would end up with a video that was speeded up three hundred times. Fifty
minutes of painting would equate to ten seconds of playback, which seemed
reasonable.
Working together, I reckoned we could get the
painting done in about five days – freeing us up, so we could move onto the
next leg of our travels.
Our travel plans had become compressed – partly
because Madelene wanted to move on anyway. She wasn’t really happy here, and
she had her heart set on going to Bali. Not being one to pass up the idea of a
beach holiday, I was happy with that.
In addition, Madelene had received some news
from Sweden, while I was doing the pencil drawing: she had been accepted on a
university course, starting early September. She had applied to do a degree in
child care, and the decision – whether she should accept the offer, or turn it
down – was weighing heavily on her. Of course, accepting a place on the course
would have a major effect on our travel plans.
I encouraged her to accept the offer – Madelene
is great with children, and this is something she is passionate about. It was a
no-brainer.
She accepted the offer.
I decided I would fly to Sweden with her,
before I returned home to the UK, to go back to work. I was fast running out of
money, anyway, so the timing wasn’t so bad.
It meant we would have less time than I
originally hoped to get the mural finished.
Not a problem, I figured. Starting early in the
morning each day, and working together, the painting wouldn’t take long. The
tricky bit was the drawing, which was now finished.
We looked at the calendar on Madelene’s phone.
It was a Tuesday, and we decided to book the flight to Bali on the following
Monday. I thought that would give us plenty of time.
It didn’t.
*
Everything started off well. I mixed a load of
greens in the polystyrene takeaway food pots I brought with me from Pulau Tuba.
I had yellow-greens, bright greens, grass greens, and dark greens.
Madelene snipped at my DIY decorators’ brushes
with nail scissors, until I had the precision tools I needed, to start filling
in the leaves.
I set my camera up on a cardboard box on the
reception counter, and I marked the position of the box with pencil. I also
outlined the position of the camera on the box. I put “Do not move this box!”
signs on the box – augmented with smiley faces, of course. I set the camera clicking
away; one picture every twelve seconds.
(I didn’t know how long it would take for the
memory card to fill up. I didn’t know how the automatic sensors would deal with
the changing light, over the course of the afternoon. I wasn’t even sure if it would
stay in focus. There were many unknowns about making the time-lapse, as there
always are with these things.)
I was starting with the jungle ferns, to the
right of where the bird would eventually be (I had decided to paint the bird
last.)
Madelene had done a great job with the brushes,
and I was pleased with the greens I had mixed. I wanted to convey a sense of
sunlight shining through the forest, splashing on the upper leaves. The
yellow-greens did a fine job of suggesting this effect.
At the end of that first day, I had completed a
half-day of painting, and I was happy with the early progress. I had no problem
imagining that we would finish the mural, comfortably, probably with a day to
spare, which we could spend lounging on the beach, before we flew to Bali.
But then, I have no problem imagining all kinds
of crazy things.
*
Our co-volunteers had decided to move on, and
Willie gave them a lift to the bus station the next day.
Before they left, I asked them to stand with
Madelene and myself behind the reception desk, while the Nikon snapped off a
couple of frames. Leo and Willie had already been featured in the time-lapse,
and it was my intention to waylay anyone else who happened to stop by, to get
them in the video too.
We waved goodbye to them, and then Madelene
took Bonnie for her morning walk, and I carried on with the painting.
It was during the course of that morning that I
fully realised what an enormous task I had set myself.
I had attempted to rationalise the chaos of the
tropical jungle by pencilling in little breaks where the plants and grasses
crossed in front of each other. I hoped this would avoid my jungle scene
dissolving into a formless green soup, and introduce a pleasing, subtle
geometry to the composition.
In practice, this meant I had hundreds of
little shapes to fill in. It was slow, time-consuming work – and I wasn’t at
all sure it would look any good once it was finished. I was afraid it might
look over-stylized next to the bird, which I was intending to paint in a more
naturalistic manner.
Fittingly, perhaps, I felt very much “lost” in
the jungle scene I was creating, and I was acutely aware of the acreage of
white space that stretched off to my left, and the limited time available to
fill it.
Nevertheless, by late afternoon on Wednesday, I
had finished applying the first layer of paint to the jungle ferns and long
grasses. The next day, I switched my attentions to the other end of the wall,
and Madelene moved in to the area I had just vacated, to begin applying the
second coat of paint.
It was great to have Madelene working alongside
me. Just knowing she was there – methodically going over the greens, making
them brighter, and richer – was a huge confidence boost. It made me feel a lot
less under-pressure, and lonely, as I worked away at my little patch of wall.
Plus, by working on different sections of the mural, we avoided getting in each
other’s way.
But still – there were problems.
I had mixed eight shades of green – meaning
there were ten altogether, counting the two base colours. They were scattered
around the reception desk in polystyrene cups, and while I had attempted to
work out a system for remembering which colour was which, in practice, they
readily got mixed-up.
Madelene would ask me which green corresponded
to which jungle plant, and I would gaze vapidly at the sea of green pots, and
select the one I thought was right. However, the differences between the greens
were often very slight, and the light was not always that good, and it was easy
to make mistakes. Sometimes I would only realise I had given Madelene the wrong
green after she had been using it for half an hour or more, meaning a good deal
of time, and effort, had been wasted, as the whole area would need to be
redone.
Needless to say, such cockups were not great
for morale.
We were still very much in “jungle territory”.
While Madelene applied the second layer of paint to the ferns and grasses, I
was down the other end – working on the big tree, and the cheese plant.
I had decided to make the trunk of the tree large,
and quite dark, as a visual counterpoint to the ferns and grasses. The mass of
the trunk would be broken up by the cheese plant creeper spiralling around it,
projecting its big, beautiful leaves at intervals.
The lower branch of the tree went off at an
upwards-sloping angle into the centre of the composition. This provided the perch
for the hornbill, which I hoped to start painting the next day.
That was, if I could get the damned cheese
plant finished.
I had mixed feelings about the cheese plant
from the beginning. I knew the leaves would be a right bastard, because of the
complex geometry of the curves. Equally, I knew: if I had the time, and the
patience, to get them right, they would reward my efforts, by looking
wonderful.
The first leaf was a battleground, as I knew it
would be. The drawing took forever to get right, and once I had eventually
finished it, I realised it was about 50% too small, in relation to the bird. So
I drew it out again, and moved on to the other leaves – which were positioned
at different angles, and so, riddled with their own fiendish geometries.
(As ever, the artistic discipline lies in the
need to make the leaves look natural –
singly, and as a group. And that means every curve within every leaf must look natural. It’s got something to do
with fractals, and mathematics.)
Applying paint to the leaves was a slow and
painstaking business, and it took me all day. And even then, I didn’t get them
all: I would have another leaf to paint the following morning, before I moved
onto the main course, the big kahuna; El
Capo himself: the hornbill.
The slow progress (as it felt at the time) wasn’t
down to laziness on the part of the artist, I can tell you! I was working long
hours! And Madelene was working long hours too! (Although not quite as long as
mine, which is fair enough, because this was not her battle in the first
place.)
My dream of doing three or four hours of
painting a day, interspersed with lots of lazing around on the beach, was a
long-forgotten fantasy.
The alarm would sound at 6.30am, and by 7am, I
was painting.
I didn’t even need the alarm, any more. My body clock had adjusted. That
intervening half hour would (sometimes) be spent running along the beach. Then
I would float in the sea, enjoying its cool embrace, before continuing work on
the wall mural.
I would paint for roughly an hour, at which
point, Madelene would have made breakfast.
I hesitate to say that breakfast was the
high-point of the day – as it implies everything went downhill from there. But
it was one of the high points.
We had long-since settled upon our perfect
breakfasting formula. Our choices reflected the fact that the toaster was
broken, and there was no grill. The only bread available in Lundu was of the
white variety, and neither of us fancied eating this sad, flabby, uncooked
material.
So, we had porridge. In addition to that,
Madelene boiled eggs for us, and we had coffee.
It was an amazing breakfast. I had bananas with
my porridge, and milk, and honey. Madelene had adjusted the timing on the eggs,
to suit our varied tastes: mine were runny, more often than not, while hers
were boiled to hell and back.
After breakfast, Madelene would take Bonnie for
her morning walk, and I would carry on painting. Then she would join me at the
coal face, and we would work solidly till lunch.
At this point, I would plug in the Nikon, so
that it could acquire some much-needed juice during our lunch break.
(Very annoyingly, I had found that it would
refuse to take pictures while it was plugged-in. This meant I couldn’t just
plug it in and forget about it while it took pictures. I had to worry about it while it took pictures,
because I was afraid its batteries might run out.
This actually happened on one occasion, meaning
that all painting activities had to cease, while the camera charged up.
Madelene pointed out how crazy this was; we had
a flight to catch in a very few days, and we could ill-afford to down brushes,
on account of the camera.
But the truth was: the time-lapse video had
become as important to me as the mural itself. And unless you make the video in
its entirety; i.e., you record everything, there’s no point in making
the video at all. So the camera was a source of acute, intermittent stress, as
you can imagine.)
We would both reconvene after lunch, and paint
solidly until the light began to fail in the late afternoon.
(By around five o’clock, the quality of the
light has degraded to the extent that you can’t see the colours properly. So at
that point, it’s time to stop.)
After a full day of painting, and stressing
about the camera, I would feel completely exhausted. What better way to relax
could there possibly be, than to paddle out to sea, with the birthday bird?
Conscientious and loyal readers will be aware that
I was gifted a large, pink inflatable “swimming aid” in the guise of a cartoon
flamingo by Madelene, by way of my 33rd birthday present. She
purchased it on the Thai island of Koh Lanta and presented it to me on the
Malaysian island of Langkawi. It has provided us with oceans of aquatic fun
ever since.
It took us a few days before Madelene used her
incredible lung power to inflate the birthday bird, following our arrival on
Borneo. Its vaguely ceremonial “wetting” probably coincided with a change of atmosphere
at the beach resort, due to the departure of our fellow volunteers.
No longer did Madelene feel like an outsider on
account of the chattering group. For my part, I was smoking and drinking less,
writing more, and generally enjoying the peace and quiet – ongoing construction
work notwithstanding.
We both felt happier, and more at home, now
that it was “just us”. Really, we just wanted to spend time together.
Hell, we were in love, and we still are. What
you gonna do?
So we celebrated our sense of liberation by
casting out to sea in the ridiculous violent-pink vessel, which had become more
to us than a membrane of vacuum-formed plastic. It was imbued with life, and
personality. Ensconced in its donut-shaped embrace, we were transported once
again to our happy place, and the feeling stayed with us. In short, the really
great times had come back.
*
I was putting in eight hours-a-day on the wall
mural, and Madelene was pitching in with six or seven. We were working towards
a deadline that loomed formidably, though not terrifyingly – and certainly not
impossibly.
I was confident we would get it finished. The
question was: could we get it finished to a high enough standard? Small
mistakes and compromises might make no odds to anyone else, but for me they
would be spears of torment thrust into my guts, whenever I looked at it, or
thought about it.
Such is the burden of the artiste.
It was Friday afternoon before I started
painting the hornbill, which occupied the centre of the wall space. Madelene moved
to the spot I had just vacated, where she began applying the second coat of
paint to the tree and the cheese plant.
Her brushwork had improved a lot. She was
confidently turning out crisp, clean edges, and glossy, deep jungle greens.
For my part, I reached for the last unopened
tin of paint – the red – and mixed a variety of orange shades. I used these to
paint the bird’s beak and its impressive horn. Then I switched to the black
paint, and I made my first – and last – really aggravating mistake: I outlined
the beak, and the horn, with lines that were too thick.
It’s easy to do, because outlines go on so
quickly. There’s a tendency to do them without much conscious thought. It’s
only when you stand back that the true impact can be assessed, and by then,
it’s often too late.
And so it was on this occasion. I assessed my
handiwork with tired eyes, and I got that vicious prickling of the skin, which
told me I had fucked up.
The lines were far too heavy; they strangled
the delicate shapes of the beak and the horn. I’d stopped thinking, probably because I was tired. The lines looked ugly.
It was infuriating, because there was no going
back: the orange areas were graded, which would mean I’d have to go over them
again, if I wanted to reduce the thickness of the lines. I didn’t have the
energy to do that.
Madelene put up with my biggest tantrum of the
whole project. As I recall, I swore a good deal, and punched the wall, hard
enough to temporarily anaesthetise my hand.
It took me a few minutes to calm down. When I
did, I started listening to Madelene’s calm words. She suggested using white
paint to thin the lines down a fraction. This wouldn’t help with the interior
lines, but I could at least reduce the thickness of the perimeter lines.
As it turned out, this was enough. Some careful
surgery toned down the visual calamity, and I decided – after a little time, a
cup of tea, and a cigarette – that it looked OK.
The storm was over, and the rest of the bird went
up without incident. It just took me a
lot longer than I had expected.
I thought the bird would be finished after a
day’s painting, but I had underestimated the complexity of the feathers. They
seemed to take me forever. Once it was finished, it was late afternoon on
Sunday – and I still had the jungle vines to paint, plus lots of finishing-off
bits. We had a flight to catch the following afternoon!
So on the Monday morning I was awake at dawn
and painting shortly after, and Madelene came to join me an hour later. We
worked without pause until midday, at which point the bloody thing was finally
finished. Starving, we wolfed down the remains of our food stockpile, which
consisted of spaghetti, and eggs.
We received some bemused and uncomprehending
looks from the Malaysians in attendance, as they watched us consume this fare.
I didn’t care. It was fuel.
I cleared away my pots of paint and took
pictures of the wall mural, packed everything up, and Willie gave us a lift to
the bus station. We caught our plane, flew to Bali, and had a wonderful,
much-needed beach holiday – without a paint pot in sight.
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