Prints by Ugandan artist Estelle Betty Manyolo Sangowawa, otherwise known as Betty Manyolo.
A Question about Art
By DERRICK AUSTIN (as published in Wildness)
Rome from the Pincio
Camille Corot
1826–1827
Oil on canvas
At a potluck, early on when everything but the wine glasses were clean, unpicked cheese sweating on plastic plates, small talk agitating the air, someone cornered me with: “If you could own any painting, what would it be?” They meant a famous painting or a painting by someone famous—to keep the conversation moving. To hang in my bedroom or beside my writing desk. This is why I don’t have tattoos. Imagine having to look at an image forever, I could have said. Instead I launched: “I saw once, in Dublin, during a year my spirit felt arid and pinched from grief, a perfect picture by Corot. It inspired in me what people used to call covetousness, and not because it was priceless or important. There are certain small pictures that you can feel yourself turning into a squint to look at—leaning tensely forward—but this one invites you to step naturally to it, so warm yet elusive is its light. Has it just finished raining—in summer or fall? Morning or dusk? Is the mood obscure, sad, serious, pious, wistful, plaintive, magnificent, or joyful? Saint Peter’s isn’t actually visible from there, nor the green slopes and earth-tone city. The stone pine on the right has a knobby trunk and shadowy canopy and thick, wavy branches. Its companion catches the wind in whooshing leaves. A priest listens to four streams pour from a wide basin. The hill looks like a place to meet an old friend or long for one.”
By DERRICK AUSTIN (as published in Wildness)
Rome from the Pincio
Camille Corot
1826–1827
Oil on canvas
At a potluck, early on when everything but the wine glasses were clean, unpicked cheese sweating on plastic plates, small talk agitating the air, someone cornered me with: “If you could own any painting, what would it be?” They meant a famous painting or a painting by someone famous—to keep the conversation moving. To hang in my bedroom or beside my writing desk. This is why I don’t have tattoos. Imagine having to look at an image forever, I could have said. Instead I launched: “I saw once, in Dublin, during a year my spirit felt arid and pinched from grief, a perfect picture by Corot. It inspired in me what people used to call covetousness, and not because it was priceless or important. There are certain small pictures that you can feel yourself turning into a squint to look at—leaning tensely forward—but this one invites you to step naturally to it, so warm yet elusive is its light. Has it just finished raining—in summer or fall? Morning or dusk? Is the mood obscure, sad, serious, pious, wistful, plaintive, magnificent, or joyful? Saint Peter’s isn’t actually visible from there, nor the green slopes and earth-tone city. The stone pine on the right has a knobby trunk and shadowy canopy and thick, wavy branches. Its companion catches the wind in whooshing leaves. A priest listens to four streams pour from a wide basin. The hill looks like a place to meet an old friend or long for one.”