Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The Sum of the Parts


How does it go? The whole is greater than the sum of the parts?  That phrase occurred to me this morning when I looked back over my shoulder at the wall of my studio where I tape and clip things I’m working on.
This  view made me think that maybe mats and frames are NOT my friends as I thought they were. Several of these have made it briefly into frames and onto living room walls (this is how I decide if they are done  … or, sometimes, how I decide I don’t really like them at all).   A couple  may be done (whether I’ve signed them or not doesn’t count).    One of them has achieved ‘reject’ status.  And there are always fragments up on the wall from paintings that failed and got cropped and still failed – this process at least  seems to generate lovely long strips of colors and patterns that I can’t abandon.
But all pasted up together on this one wall, I like all of them. A  generous overload  of pattern and flower and all the things I love putting into paintings.   I don’t know if there’s anything for me to learn from this: I don’t think I should be collage-ing them all together into one gigantic frame.  I just liked the way they all looked, crammed together this way, and they made me smile.

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