Working Out My Approach to Composition

title: Study of White
oil paint on 8 by 10 inch board

When planning out paintings in detail, beyond basic compositions, the results have left me less than satisfied.  The control freak approach to composition works for some people.  Personally, I think a painting will tell me where it wants to go while I'm holding the brush or knife.  (I'm not going to stop trying the control freak approach.  I change over time and it might start working for me.)

The big question for me is when to stop painting.  My goal in painting is simplicity.  

A professor once told me simplicity, simplicity, simplicity was the key to design.   He was not talking about paintings, but the advice seems to work for me, or at least get interesting results.

Currently, simplicity is achieved by a sort of process of elimination.  Starting with thin, transparent layers of paints a complex, over done collection of shapes are created. As more layers are added the composition emerges as parts of the painting fade into a blurred background.  

Achieving simplicity is difficult for those of us who tend to over think or over do paintings and other projects.   This is a personal struggle against the desire to keep adding one more detail, one more brushstroke, one more anything.  It destroys the feel of  spontaneity that I seek in paintings.

What Is Beauty These Days

Flowers Floating on A Reflection

What is Beauty?   It's a word.  It was important in the 19th century.   

Today, it's worn out from overuse.  A girl once said to me that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty; and, in the same breath said that beauty is only skin deep.   I was a boy at the time, but the phrases stuck with me.

There is real conflict in those phrases.  

She was talking about a friend who was less than attractive in her eyes.  I had to take her word for it.  

What a crappy way to see a friend.  Maybe, she really wasn't seeing her friend.  People tend to not see people they are familiar with.

Why did she use the phrase inner beauty?  There is no inner beauty. Even if it exists, there is no way to perceive such a thing without a physical expression.   

There are two things I believe about beauty.

        1.    Beauty is a surface effect.

        2.    It has a biological/perceptual basis.

The only time I think the concept of beauty has any real use is when I evaluate paintings or drawings that I intend to place for sale.  That would be when I am trying my hand at marketing.    

So, back to the girl with the crappy friend.  

I never actually met her friend.  She wasn't trying to match her up with me.  I don't have a clue as to what was going on.  It was important enough for her to say it out loud.   

Beauty does not lie at the core of anything, not human, not objects.  It is surface, like color.  A reflection of something.  It belongs in the world of art, design, and marketing.   It's about how we perceive objects.