The beauty of creation is it comes in the form of what we believe “beauty” is. Artists interpret their world in a variety of ways by conveying it through elaborate designs, splashes of color, and even photo clippings of our tangible life as well.
Many people don’t realize the intricacy of simplicity.
When pastel hues are used instead of bold colors, when strips of lines are used instead of winding loops, the viewer is typically left appalled. Why is that? When artworks, such as Agnes Martin’s “With My Back to World” collection, are only bars of paints, the viewer’s mind is swirling to make sense of the piece. The cogs in their brain try to find answers as to what it’s seeing. It’s wanting to label it as gorgeous, confusing, or unattractive.
Humans naturally overthink situations that could never happen because we always want to plan and prepare for worse. Abbie states in “The Art of Overthinking” article that theories and different timelines of our life crawl into our brain and nibble at it slowly until we’re left with nothing, but the negativity we built our thoughts around.
If only we could simplify our thoughts, similar to how Martin painted the “The Tree”. She only used the most basic of shapes, a rectangle, to create it. The piece doesn’t need every individual crust of the bark, swaying branches, or veins of an individual leaf.
With the Earth’s one year anniversary of the Coronavirus lockdown, I can’t help but imagine how the progress of healing the virus victims can go sideways.
What if we run out of vaccines?
What if more people contract the virus?
What if someone close to me passes away?
All the seemingly uncontrollable thoughts can be tamed, if only we lived with a simple mind.
