Tags
#art, #bookcover, #gabrielgarciamarquez, #illustration, #loveinthetimeofcholera, #magicrealism, #reading, eternallove, lovestories, watercolor
“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ is a book I reread in times of distress. There’s something so life affirming about this piece of literature that it fascinates, excites and calms me, all at the same time. Fermina Daza remains one my favorite characters in literature, and half way through reading the book for the third time, I started this little painting without any direction or set ideas about form or color. I like to think the words manifested themselves in the colors and, right at the end, while waiting for the page to dry, a magical accident happened. The bottle of gold pigment on my desk has a loose lid and it tipped over when I tried reaching for a pen. I rushed to fix it by dusting off the gold, but the stubborn glittery powder stuck to the painting. I was really upset. But in the end, after everything dried, the painting is all the better for it. More so in person, than in this miserable scan.
Reality is full of magic. Sometimes, that magic comes in the shape of accidents.
