This wasn’t my first time at the local art center, but you rarely walk into a building like this and witness the same allure. As I wander the virtually vacant rooms, the tattered wooden floors squeak beneath me. At first glance, and to my disappointment, none of the pieces jump out at me. I do not mean this in a presumptuous way, but normally I am more intuitive to art than I was in this moment. Maybe it was the loud noises of my classmates echoing between the walls of the nearly empty rooms, but I began to feel insecure about my lack of thoughts, which in turn only made it harder for me to connect with a piece. Although in time, I was able to find a piece that suited my fancy. It was called Ice Crystals #1, by Paula McCartney. The emotions of the piece began to ally with my own.
I see cream colored flowers progressing outward towards the edge of the work like fireworks in the night sky. The dark background surrounding them draws out mystery and a sense of impatience for me. Like I am sitting here waiting for them to grow off the canvas. But how? How can I expect something static to grow? The artist must make it grow, but she created them at this stage of bijou budding. The source of the color change is like an epicenter of an earthquake; carrying the power of the entire piece within its compact body. I wonder, much like when I look at any piece of art, what the creator was thinking. In this case, why did he or she stop there when there was so much open space to branch out. It seems constricting to me. I fear that if I look too strenuously at the image in front of me, I’ll become blind to its true meaning. Maybe the flowers didn’t want to grow; they were content being quaint. All this room to grow, yet still, these dozen or so little wildflowers only take up the center of the page.
I find this ironically similar to us humans. I understand that everyone grows differently. But I still believe that we too often cast society as the artists; letting it choose what job we get, what we do with our lives, where we live, etc. All of these choices become so influenced by what society calls the, “Norm,” that we are basically letting it control who we are.
Even though I strongly felt the urge of wanting something more out of this painting, I
could almost equally feel a sense of satisfaction. Not everybody feels that intense need to branch out. Some, if not most, are perfectly content with where they are. They are the flowers in this piece. In fact, I almost envy these people. I tend to switch from thing to thing, place to place, or activity to activity, because I want to see what else there is out there. But it worries me that I’ll never find complete satisfaction. Likewise, it’s also a huge concern for me that I’ll end up settling in life. There are so many folks out there living utterly stunted lives. Do they even realize it? And even though the picture this artist captured is black and white, nothing in life really is. If it was, this essay would mean nothing because the picture would simply be that, a picture. The grey areas in life are what gives us choice, vision, and a voice. It’s what allows us to create and explore, right? Looking back up at the picture I decided to write about, it almost seems like the flowers are breaking through the darkness. As I stare, unlike their size, their fragrance grows stronger. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have the rest of the canvas blank.Afterall, in a few months that’ll be everybody in this class; starting new and learning to branch out. Who knows where we will all end up. Things sometimes feel static in my life, especially when I’m in the middle of deciding such big things. I think I worry too much about growing right, that I won’t truly grow at all. I try to control and plan and know everything that lays out in front of me, but I know now that I’m not the artist, I am the art. God is my creator, and how I am to be created I will never know, but what I do know is that I will be created for a reason - just as these pale wildflowers were. No piece of art is perfect, but every piece of art is subjective to its imperfections.