Facing the Wrong Way

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On the way from home to Kintamani, I stop at Tegalalang for a coffee.
A tourist attraction if ever there was one, the rice terraces of Tegalalang draw visitors from all over the world. Armed with my brushes and paints, I study the contours of the terraces, the curves of the narrow embankments, the arrangement of the coconut palms and the countless shades of green that make up this living wall.
As I trace the main lines of the composition in my sketchbook, I gradually become immersed in a world of shapes and colours.
The minutes slip by...

Then something catches my attention.
On the terrace of the neighbouring café, people walk past with their backs to the landscape, gazing into tiny screens held at arm’s length. They strike all manner of strange poses and assume equally astonishing expressions.
I soon realize that they are taking photographs of themselves, turning themselves into the main subject of an image in which the rice terraces—at which they have barely glanced—serve merely as a backdrop.

I feel like calling out:
“Turn around—it’s all happening on the other side, right behind you!”

I am well aware that we make the world our own through the images and objects we create. My watercolor, too, is an artefact: an interpretation rather than the landscape itself.
Yet there is a fundamental difference.
The time required to create it, the attention needed to understand the landscape, and the movement of colour through the brush all demand patience. Little by little, through the act of painting, I make the rice fields of Tegalalang my own.

I doubt that the same connection can be formed through a fleeting selfie.
Ultimately, to anyone able to discern something of a person through the images they create, my watercolor may resemble me far more than a photograph of my face against a landscape I have barely taken the time to see.