We all too often seek to keep things in their pristine or idealized states, be it polishing a car, mowing a lawn, taking a bath, or even painting a scene we captured in a photo. And while I am not suggesting that we all stop bathing, I do want to suggest we embrace - or at least appreciate - the natural aesthetic that is born when one relinquishes control. As things age or attract the remnants of outside forces, like a spill of gas on the shop floor or a boot print in wet cement, something new and unexpected is born. Overtime these remnants find a certain harmony with one another that is, if only for a brief moment, beautiful. Look around, you will see it everywhere - pen marks on a child's school desk telling an untold story; names chiseled into a park bench bisecting lines of green; construction paint on the sidewalk providing instruction and color to a gray, cold pathway; or even rotten fruit in a knotted, wooden
bowl telling a story of a relative lost.
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| An aging sidewalk bears high aesthetics. |
In painting, relinquishing control means allowing for mistakes to happen - one after another - until the whole piece blossoms. It is much like a meadow, wherein plants we would otherwise call weeds come into a natural harmony that is largely impossible to recreate unless we allow it to happen on its own. Ask yourself this, for example: is your backyard more beautiful than the mountains?
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| Scraping a painting everytime a color is added produces an aesthetic beyond conventional planning. |
