Cyclo Driver Crossing a Flooded Street in the Rain — Print & Oil Painting

The driver is standing on the pedals and the whole picture depends on that posture. He is out of the saddle, weight thrown forward over the bars, one leg driving down and the other trailing, his back rounded and his head lowered under a pale hat. Seen from directly behind, he reads as a man pushing rather than a man riding, and everything else in the canvas exists to explain why that effort is needed.

The water is the reason. It stands across the entire road in a flat sheet, pale grey green and perfectly still, deep enough that the lower rim of the rear wheel and the base of the frame are lost in it. There is no current, no splash and no wake. The flood is not running anywhere; it is simply sitting there, and he is going through it.

The cyclo carries one strong colour. Its folded hood is scarlet, the only saturated note in a canvas of greys, olives and bone, and directly below it the flood returns a short red smear that is the second brightest mark in the work. Between them the passenger bench is empty.

Both sides of the street are lined with market stalls under awnings in blue, teal and dull ochre, stacked back into the distance and progressively swallowed by the weather until the far end is only a pale blur. Small dabs of yellow, red and blue among them stand for goods and vendors, and every one of them is returned by the water as a broken vertical below.

Rain crosses the whole surface as long pale strokes at a slight tilt, passing over stalls, road and rider without stopping at any edge. The measured saturation is low and the value low with it, which is what a grey street under grey weather produces. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a cyclo rider passing market stalls on a rainy avenue and vendors with umbrellas crossing a busy rainy market street.