DIMENSIONS (INCHES)

ARTWORK

Mixed Media on Canvas

DESCRIPTION

The painting depicts an analogy to remind us to treasure our lives and not seek fulfillment in trivial things as it offers nothing of value. The piece reflects the story of a large sea creature, the turtle, who lives thousand yojanas down on the bottom of the ocean since billions of years. This turtle has neither limbs nor flippers and also has only one eye. His belly is as hot as fire and the shell on his back is as cold as a the snow capped mountains. He yearns to reach the red sandalwood log with a hollow perfect enough to place his belly in. This way, he would be able to cool his stomach and the sun rays from the above will give warmth to his chilly back. However he can rise to the ocean’s surface once every thousand years only. Even when he fortunately finds a sandalwood floating log, it rarely has a hollow the size of his belly. Against all odds, he once found the perfect sandalwood log but with his distorted vision, he misunderstood the log to be drifting eastwards when in real it was drifting westwards. Thus, he always mistook the direction of the log and swam farther away from it in attempts to reach it quickly. Being born in this world, we have the opportunity to transform everything that makes us suffer, yet many of us cannot grasp the value of the life we possess and instead seek fulfillment in trivial things as it offers nothing of value.