mathoda.com

Although the tag line of my website mathoda.com is the “art and observations of Ranjit S. Mathoda”, I shall now confess that I have never felt that art and observation are very separate things.

When I was young I concluded that the best reason to admire Leonardo da Vinci was not his anticipation of the helicopter, his accuracy in depicting the organs of the body, or his vibrant and subtle paintings.  I admire da Vinci because he relentlessly focused on observing what is there and concluded from that what is possible.

To do so required him to question common knowledge and perhaps more challengingly, personal knowledge.  When I first tried to draw a can of soup, the result was barely a rectangle, and definitely not a cylinder.  The eye saw, the mind reinterpreted, and the hand faltered.  No such object actually is a perfect cylinder.  Capturing the shape precisely requires a constant elimination of assumption, and a direct connection with what is actually there.

From Leonardo I learned that creativity does not spring from an extra deft hand.  It is conjured by a special focus of the mind.  This was a pleasing thought for a young child with bad penmanship.

Creating a work of art is an attempt to capture a particular focus of the mind, at its best a vibrant and insightful focus, and share it.  To further that ambition and to broaden the scope of my inspiration, I am now offering a service where I will make custom oil paintings inspired by anyone who contacts me.  The details of this service, and images of the paintings I have made in the past, can be found at mathoda.com/art.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Pixar may have made their best movie yet.  Check out the trailer for wall-e:

(or in a larger size:http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/trailer_large.html)

Next, by Michael Crichton.

This book is about the very strange biotechnology future that is approaching much faster than most people suspect. It is also about how this future may be governed by our current laws, which make little sense. For example, because the law doesn’t recognize your right to own your body parts, major medical institutions have more rights and incentives in your body parts than you do. I couldn’t agree with Mr. Crichton more on either his observations about the technology or the law. Unfortunately, I’m not sure a novel was the proper format for this book, as the story and characters seemed to have been forgotten in favor of the ideas being communicated.

The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008, by Mark Halperin and John F. Harris.

This book’s subtitle notwithstanding, it is actually an examination of how campaign masterminds like Bill Clinton and Karl Rove operate. To its credit the book does delve deeply into explaining the operational techniques and why some seemingly foolhardy policy positions are actually effective at moving a candidate closer to victory. It shows how better insights and superior execution of a campaign can catapult little known candidates over their rivals, to the heights of power.

It also shows in some detail what I’ve long suspected: that although their followers are often motivated by their hate for the leaders of the opposing political party, the leaders of successful campaigns often admire each other and copy liberally from each other whatever works.

The book fails to adequately address the most interesting question about the 2008 campaign: how the Internet effects fund raising, getting the message out, and turning out the vote on election day. The subject matter of the subtitle wasn’t quite addressed.

Rembrandt: the Painter at Work by Ernst van Wetering
Velazquez: the Technique of Genius by Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido

How exactly did Rembrandt and Velazquez create their paintings? What choices did they make in how to make their brush strokes, how to mix their paints, how to layer their paints, how to compose their creations?

Sadly, if these books touched on such matters, they did so in a rather oblique way only. What was very helpful in these books was their inclusion of pictures of both entire paintings and of closeups of portions of such paintings. From the pictures I learned alot.