PLAY LIKE A CHILD

 

The thing I most admire about artists is their ability to make art look simple to do. You think, wow I could do that in a flash, but then try. It’s not so simple.

Three artists who excelled in making things look simple were Joan Miro, Cy Twombly and Picasso. The drawings of all three display this ability the most. Twombly could make random marks somehow come together in a symphony. Miro conjured up fanciful images with random lines and Picasso could draw anything seemingly without ever lifting the pencil from the paper. They all somehow rose above the dark abstraction of Pollock or the deep color studies of Rothko to create a more joyous world.

These gifts did not come naturally, but were a learned skill over time. As Picasso once said, he worked all his life so he could finally do art like a child. I never hope to achieve artistic levels of these giants, but I can enjoy simple work along the way. Efforts that sometimes, yield surprises you might call art…