"Purity is one of the two most attractive ideas the human race knows. The other is perfection. Purity is absence, perfection is fullness.-Purity seeks to eliminate inessentials.
-I am as attracted to purity as the next guy. But it must not happen here."
Annie Dillard
(Living by Fiction)
I like Dillard's thoughts on the abstract art movement, though I honor the "Minimalist" and would love to capture the bare essentials of what makes art art as they did and are still doing. To get rid of the clutter that is only skin deep and go strait for the heart of your subject is, I believe, every good artist purgative. I am working very hard to express an idea faster and with greater impact with every piece that I work on. Simple? Yes! But for the complicated mind it can be a challenge of a life time. It takes a quieter mind than I have most days and I am beginning to believe a much more advanced one than I am equipped with at the moment. But I press on!
We are complicated beings, you and me, just ask a local physician and he will give you the whole nine yards on just how complicated. The mind will make a person ill, the mold in the basement or the tuna sandwich he ate the other day. It could be all of the above or it could be something to do with the changes of the weather! Who knows; so take these pills and hopefully you will feel better before they start making you sick! So I ask you to try on simplicity for a hat and go walking around in the buff! Not only does your mind not want to cooperate but you will get warning sines from you body that you are surely going to freeze to death very soon! So it works in art, if you strip it down to the bare essentials what do you have? A pure white canvas? I am not sure but I am sure that what Dillard talks about with the true pure art is in fact very true; "Purity" can't be the whole aim of the artist.
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