Simplicity is the Final Achievement
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederick Chopin
Simplicity isn’t just about the art having simplicity, it is about your mind having simplicity. It means you have a mind dedicated to essence of creating, not the complexity of finding a ‘style’. It means a mind focused, a mind free and a mind pure.
My favorite artist is Henri Matisse. His radical and expressive color work (Le Fauves) is beautiful. His Moroccan period is sensual. but it is his simplest of line drawings, his simplest of paper collages done at the end of his life that excite me the most. Why? Because all the ingredients of 60 years of being an artist had been distilled into an simple, glorious dish. A dish a younger Matisse could not have understood or wanted to pursue. He was like a master chef who learns what doesn’t need to be in the dish.
What doesn’t need to be in your dish?
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com