Monday Motivator: Jagged or Smooth?

Art motivational quote

“If one were walking along a barren, sandy beach and came upon two objects, a jagged stone and a smooth, water-worn pebble, both about the same size and material, chances are one would pick up the pebble and ignore the rough stone.

“…In addition to being of greater tactile and visual interest than the rough stone, the pebble would represent a form at the end of the process of erosion. It’s ‘life history’ would include having once been a fragment, like the stone…”
Vision and Invention by Calvin Harlan, page 140

Paintings that reveal different parts of themselves as the light changes, that reward looking up close differently to looking from a distance, that don’t tell you everything at once, those are the water-worn pebbles.

6 Replies to “Monday Motivator: Jagged or Smooth?”

  1. It is incredible! How did you know? It looks like as if you participate in discussion of my new work. I am just considering if I have to round a jugged edge of a cliff in my new picture or not. And you just gave me the solution. Thank you! It is almost always the same. As soon I cannot decide something, you post an excellent solution!

    1. Gorgeous, rich colours in your painting Natalya. Beautiful glow to the mountains in particular. Beautiful. And a fascinating story behind the building… 500 years is quite some legacy.

  2. This building has an amazing history. In the early sixteenth century in these mountains lived doctor (Tabib) Magtym. He obviously had been a good doctor. When he died people raised some money and built a mausoleum over his grave. For 500 years, the people go there hoping to be healed. Now that’s life has become better and people again raised some money and the mausoleum was restored. I was shocked that this is not a mausoleum of a Shah, nor a priest, but of the the rural doctor. He has left a good memory upon himself for five hundred years !

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