On the Easel: Emergence

Detail of Emergence: A Custom Abstract

This is a close up of large scale abstract that is currently on my easel wall. It's a companion piece to a custom abstract I just finished for a law office in Lawrenceville, owned by a former student of mine.

I'm not sure why I like it so much, I just know that this portion of the painting speaks to me and I keep looking at it. I see different things in it every time I encounter it and a new part of it feels alive.

I love abstracts so much for this very reason.

They can grab us and resonate with something we don't yet have words for. They can help us look at things from a different perspective and they can show us that there is always a story to be told.

So many of the important things in life are this way. Love, pain, grief, joy. These cannot be summarized in short blurbs or tidy paragraphs, they often have multiple perspectives, and they bleed in and through each other, shifting and changing as we do.

Putting paint on a canvas. Stepping back to look at it. Seeing something new as you do. Doing it again. And allowing the picture to take shape without expecting it to look like something you've seen before. Feels like a pretty good metaphor for life.

I love doing it and I love even more doing it with other people. Creating together is what it's all about, after all.