Free as a bird
Posted: November 30, 2012 Filed under: Galleries, Private Collections | Tags: Ash Almonte, contemporary art, creativity, how creativity works, life, limits, restrictions, the value of limitation Leave a comment
Ash Almonte, As Free as a bird, 2011, courtesy of Russell Collection, Austin, TX
Free as a bird.
Yet a wing is subject to wind.
I like the color palette of this painting. I like vibrant but restrained – to watch what happens when choice is self-restricted. Maybe all workable freedom slipstreams on limitation.
Much maligned Boundary often brings with itself a double dose of the Creative. Because you can focus on the intricacies a particular problem (or medium) rather than the massive weight of what to choose. That limitation frees up lots of bandwidth. It’s an interesting conundrum of life, standing at the intersection of spontaneity and restriction.
Someone asked me the other day, “What would you do if money were no object.” And really I couldn’t even answer. I have no idea what I would do. Be immobilized by the vast space of potential. Wait for the wind to lift me, sightless and hurl me forward. Then maybe some necessary brilliance would unfurl. Because it seems my creativity only works against a foe -some absurd rule that deserves a good right-brained spanking.
Oh, there’s a chandelier underneath those washed and dripping strokes. A little structure under all that freedom, to hold it up – to give it a roosting place.
Thanks Easter bunny
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: Galleries | Tags: Alexandra Eldridge, contemporary art, creativity, Easter bunny, Einstein, Imagination, rabbit, Russell Collection, spring 2 Comments
Alexandra Eldridge, 2011, http://www.alexandraeldridge.com
Recently, my oldest son asked me if I’d seen the Easter bunny. I said, “Not recently, but last time we spoke, he hadn’t had his second cup of coffee so he was, well, a bit crabby.”
“Oh, kinda sounds like you, mom,” he sighed.
We find ourselves wandering these unfamiliar streets sometimes, befuddled at the intersection of imagination and reality. Not really sure what to say, yet understanding vaguely that imagination must be nurtured. Hearing the Einstein eyes of this rabbit whisper, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” What to say to be truthfully imaginative? Or imaginatively truthful?
Just like in these Alexandra Eldridge paintings. “To do” lists fly helter-skelter and a too helpful butterfly unravels the coiled clothesline of reasonableness, now a scattered string of lost thoughts. Spilled coffee drips languidly down the right side of the canvas. Mr. E. Bunny at 6:15 AM.
Perhaps we could get some advice from this little charmer below, perched atop a yellow easter egg-shaped hill. Stones sprinkling down from the clouds. Fragments of words, thoughts getting lost in the downpour. Couldn’t Mr. Bunny could spring off the hill anytime he chose, to avoid the pelting? Perhaps he is frozen. An instinctual, native response to danger. The feeling I get when my kids ask me if I’ve seen the Easter bunny.
“Not lately honey, I mainly just email him.”
Alexandra Eldridge, Look Up, Russell Collection, Austin, Texas
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