Annie's World

Two years ago I'd been working on a short story about a woman whose world was beginning to disintegrate. To help visualize her mental dilemma I doodled a diagram of her physical space, the inside and the outside of the house she lived in. A year or so later, as I was clearing out my own physical space, I came across the sketch and wondered if it might translate into a painting. I wasn't sure I could get away with it. But the key, I felt, was to do it big. In the story there was a snow storm outside, but visually I didn't want any white interfering with the blues. At the time I was experimenting with a gold crayon, and so what emerged instead of a snowstorm was a chaotic, disintegrating sky, which served as a contrast for the apparent order inside the house.

And so, I came upon a problem I would pursue in the future: the relationship between chaos and order. The theme is popular in modern physics. But it's equally fascinating for anyone struggling with mental coherence. In terms of painting, the question is: how far can I let an image disintegrate without it losing its coherence? And what is the relationship between disintegrated art and abstract art? Are they the same? Abstract art may involve disintegrated lines, but it seems to me that it can never be chaotic.

The painting has pleased my for another reason. As a painter one is always wary that a picture might slide from the category of painting into that of illustration -- its meaning narrowing down, running parallel to a story or a message. I'm satisfied that "Annie's World" has grown up independent of its parentage, though a story may have occasioned its birth.

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