Out of Chaos

Collecting materials, tools, and ideas is the first step.

Whether an artist’s studio is neat as a pin or heaped full of brushes, tools, clay or wood, disorder characterizes the creative process. A chaotic jumble of ideas spill out of the brain and become organized in drawn or painted forms. Tubes of color sort themselves out, then are squeezed onto the palette in a jumble of mixed hues. A teapot spout, in a box of cast-offs, offers itself to the sculptor as the beginning of a bird with a long neck. A dream works its way to the conscious surface, suggesting a vision that emerges in material form from a chunk of clay.

In the process of sorting out the chaotic, disparate things are pinned down, forms take sculptural shape, layers of color illuminate the canvas, and collaged paper scraps become organized into arresting compositions. The chaos of materials and ideas gives way to sorted-out symphonies of shapes, forms, and colors. The artist, if successful, has made harmonic sense out of a world of visual discord. Chaos, interspersed with times of quietude, becomes fodder for the creative process and is instrumental in reflecting the world through the eyes of the artist.