A Small Act of Rebellion - Mar 9 2021

 

A Small Act of Rebellion

March 9 2021

It never quite looks straight,

no matter how much I fuss

adjust

lightly touch one corner.

A watercolour

on a pale yellow wall.

A landscape

in a modest frame

in the muted colours of fall.

So each time I'm walking past

I give it a little nudge.

I squint

step back

and cock my head,

but still, it seems off-centre.

A right-angled object

on a rectangular wall

in a standard room-sized box.

These are the places

we choose to inhabit,

measured, regular, ruled.

While we belong in mother nature,

in her curved organic spaces

that change with the passage of time

and are complicated and layered;

like the distant hills,

receding

in deepening shades of blue.

Like this understated painting

on thick absorbent paper,

its imagery softly fading

and all its lines a blur.

Perhaps a small act of rebellion

against the strict regimentation

of my well-ordered room,

where everything's in its place

all the pictures neatly aligned.

A little bit of mischief

from a portrait of nature

confined to rigid walls. 

I recently put up a couple of new paintings: 2 blank expanses of wall that I realize only now, in retrospect, were crying out to be filled.

My walls are indeed a kind of pale yellow, and one of the paintings is as described – except even more monochromatic than autumnal.

I know it's straight; but every time I look, I get the impression it's a little off and have to subdue an impulse to tinker.

But what if we lived in curved spaces, with rounded walls and no corners? Would paintings still be flat? Would they need to be shoehorned into frames cut at 90 degrees? Perhaps a rectangular painting on a rectangular wall in a closed box reassures us with its impression of order, the delusion that we can wall ourselves off from contingency and misfortune. There is either straight or not – and no in-between. Would we feel at ease in a rounded room? Would we lose our bearings? Would anything suddenly seem permissible? . . . And would it hurt for me to have a little more colour in my interior décor?!!

The contrast between the soft-focus watercolour and the rigid geometry of the room made me think differently about this sense of its being askew. It struck me as a clever little twist to personify the painting and turn it into a critique not only of our lack of architectural imagination, but our alienation from nature.