GC Myers- Blaze, 2014
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has conquered all the difficulties, after one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
–Frédéric Chopin
Simple isn’t as easy as it looks.
I’ve said this before here. But, as Chopin noted, it should be the ultimate goal. To say the most with the least. To pare away clutter then magnifying and strengthening what is left.
That was my starting point years ago when I first began painting. I believed that if I took the same amount of care with each square inch of a piece, regardless of what it was or where it fell in the picture plane, every bit of that painting would have its own visual impact, its own important role to play. Thus, the painting would come alive.
It was in the attention given–in the texture or the quality,richness, and complexity of the color, for example– not in the detail or subject.
That thought allowed many very simple compositions to come alive.
It seems easy enough, doesn’t it?
The problem is that it seems so self-evident that sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. Clutter comes back in the form of extraneous detail that doesn’t add anything and, even worse, clouds what is meant to be heard or seen.
Why? I can’t say with any certainty. Maybe the same naive confidence that was the driving force has changed and one begins to doubt their abilities? Maybe one builds a fortress with detail as a shield.
Or maybe it’s because simplicity sometimes requires the artist to say all that needs to be said with only a few of the tools that they have worked so hard to acquire over the years. If you have these tools, why not use them?
Getting back to Chopin, that would be like an accomplished pianist feeling the need to play as many notes and chords that they could fit into every piece.
That just makes for clutter and disharmony.
I am using a piece from 2014, Blaze, at the top to illustrate this post. It’s another one of those pieces that never found a home. For me, this might be the most frustrating of these pieces because it checks so many boxes for me, including the need for simplicity. In recent weeks, I have been spending some time looking at it, especially the parts of it that might seem less important to the casual viewer. I get so much delight in these parts of this painting because they have as much visual impact as the central figure of Red Tree.
Simplicity.
Let’s finish this off with some Chopin. You saw that coming, right? This is Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat major op.53. Not being a classical pianist, I can’t tell you if this adheres to Chopin’s thoughts on simplicity. But it is a good way to kick off a Thursday morning. We’ll leave it at that.
Redtree Times 