Thursday, Oct. 29 —
In the highlands of Sri Lanka the hills are combed into terraces, row after row of tea bushes following the slope the way ripples follow a stone dropped in water. This is the hour after rain, when the air is rinsed and cool and everything green looks newly made.
At the centre of the picture one round hill rises out of the mist. Its terraces curve around it in dark, glossy lines, each one a ledge of leaves that holds the last drops of the shower. A thin path of red earth winds up between them, the one warm note in a world of greens, and it leads the eye all the way to the top, where a small white shelter sits under a roof of terracotta. It is the kind of place where pickers might rest out of the rain, and just now it stands empty and quiet.
A few tall, slender trees lean over the slopes, their leaves loose and translucent, dabbed on with a wet brush and left to bleed into the paper. Behind them, valleys fill with soft mist, and layers of blue ridges retreat one behind another until they dissolve into the sky.
The sky is the painter's greatest freedom here. Heavy grey clouds are still drifting off, damp and pearly, but a break has opened and a wash of pale gold is spreading through the upper left, touching the tops of the hills. Colours are laid down thin and clear, greens running into teal, ochre warming the shadows, edges softening wherever water was allowed to travel.
The mood is one of patience and relief. Nothing is hurried on these slopes. The rain has passed, the work will begin again, and for a moment the whole landscape simply breathes.