My Word | Paint towards the light

For instance, I was told recently by a wise old painting guru about a constant war going on between the dark and the light.

I thought, good grief — you mean there’s a war that I don’t about?

I am always fascinated by wacky theories and old dead religions like Manichaeism, so I asked my guru to tell me more.

He said oil painters and water colourists are totally different beings — one paints into the light, while the other paints into the dark.

Here’s how it works: oil painters begin by painting in the dark spaces of the scene — first the darkest darks, then the dark shadows and grey areas, then the in-between areas, then finally the light spots and lastly the bright sparkly highlights.

Because of the viscosity and slow drying time of oil paints, it’s a lot easier to make a dark painting light than the other way around.

Water colourists, on the other hand, work the opposite way.

Because water colours dry fast, these artists start with the brightest areas, which on white paper are often left unpainted, and then gradually paint in the grey areas, the mid-tones and finally the darkest darks.

So, water-colourists are like cave explorers moving from the light into the dark, which explains why I’ve always been a bit suspicious of them and their fancy brushes and expensive paper and strange flicking techniques.

This also explains why people with extreme views of the world always end up in the dark.

I’ve never thought of Mr Trump and Mr Musk as watercolour painters, but they do, in fact, display the very same behavioural traits.

They start off from a bright, shiny place where freedom of speech, common sense and clearly defined roles for people of all races and genders are the guiding lights.

Then they start restricting things.

Non-common-sense books are banned, freedom of speech and movement is restricted for undesirable people, life is made a prison for those who fall between the gender divide, and opportunities are denied to people who come from behind in the race for wealth and happiness.

Eventually, their painting becomes a murk of mud and darkness, punctuated by a few sparkly areas on the surface where the billionaires live.

Like all dark visionaries from Hitler to Pol Pot, Mr Trump is trying to turn the clock back to a time when everything was fiscally, racially, sexually and generally great again.

But the universe is like a painting — you can’t go back, there’s only forward, unless you want to white everything out and start again like a sort of cultural Big Bang.

That was tried in France and Germany and Cambodia, but the painting used too many layers of crimson and eventually went dark.

It seems the world is now heading into an extended period of shade where Nazi salutes and other ugly macho stuff is great again, but remember: the Earth is on a long elliptical orbit and always comes back into sunlight.

We just have to stay steady and engaged, build our communities and be like the honeyeater — fly towards the light.

Apologies to water-colourists.

I love your work, but the metaphor was just too good to ignore.

John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.