Genius in the Mess

My mother always threatened me with a hazmat team.  "At least clear a path to your bed" she would cry.  Laundry baskets held books, boots and sheafs of paper, anything but the dirty clothes that carpeted the floor in piles.  You couldn't see clean from dirty, and valuable objects peeked out from under the mounds.  I won't go into the issues with this when you had dogs and cats.  My life continued to be like that until we listed our house when everyone moved to new places; and I mean when my own son and our roommates left.

Since then, I have worked hard to keep my home clean but in my creativity; I crave chaos.  My paintings illicit comments like, "I thought these were photographs" and there is a small part of me that cringes.  I like impressionism and I am striving for that.  Impressionism is about bold strokes of light and dark, cold and warm; placed side by side in a random seeming splash.  When you stand back, it all becomes clear and a forest might come to life.  A woman reclining or even a hillside with an evening glow appears.  It is hard to dial in this elusive technique because we study the world and strive for every nuance we can see.

Impressionists have learned to distill the details and only include the simple statements in the vision that speak the clearest to the viewer.  I watched Robert Krogel once walk up to his piece in a show he was painting.  He picked up his brush, put two or three colors on it, touched the painting in three tiny places and walked away.  He had changed the whole aspect of the image and taught me an incredible lesson.  You don't need every detail to tell a story and in fact, it can ruin the narrative with too much detail.

Here this weekend, I sit in front of another expert who explains his process and coaxes clarity from a riot of colors.  Mike Beeman is trying to tease understanding into our detail loving brains and help us work for courage in our color.  His backgrounds dance with contrast and colors that don't seem to have any relation to each other.  As we strive to celebrate our master, I am grateful for everything this man is showing us.  Celebrate the chaos of life by creating art.

Be free in your art, have courage to work for chaos on the canvas and be grateful for those who are willing to share their process.  In the meantime, I need to fold my clothes and put away my clean laundry.