ABSTRACT
Buildings from the Hidden Valley read a marginal note in one of the exhaustive sketch-books of Robert Powell. Often his paintings even look like pre-verbal fictions or visual narratives before language, just as man began to paint long before he knew how to write. The most intriguing aspect of Bob's oeuvre, for me, is the ambiguity in many of his pictures. A gateway to Upper Mustang, a monumental structure solidly built, as it seems, of round river stones and rammed earth between two tall deodar trunks. The spiral form of its outer enclosure is very unusual in Himalayan architecture, obviously containing, but also enticing the viewer to enter into its secret. In this painting, Bob again spins his ambiguous yarns. Down to earth, he tells the story of how the old house has been built from roughly hewn rocks, the absence of round stones suggest that it is not near a river or glacial moraine.
