The Elusiveness of Simplicity

I’m struggling with simplicity!  In art, in life, in the garden, in the wardrobe!  Simplicity is achieved when anything that is unimportant, never used, irrelevant, superfluous (not to say redundant as well!) is removed.  I do love to get rid of things…but when the naked few are left, they have to be perfect.  Art is not only choosing what should be IN but also what should be OUT.

I hate books or films that are padded out with rubbish, so I’d like to get rid of it in my quilts… And everything that is IN should relate to everything else that is left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the above sequence of pictures you can see my first attempt …which included pipes sticking up on the left and 3 purple monsters approaching the barge!!!  Well I got rid of those (image 2) but then felt the very dark shape in the middle ground was just too solid and boring…also it meant that the whole piece was almost equally divided between light and dark….so I increased the amount of light and cut into the dark to make the positive /negative shapes more interesting…also that would enable more of a connection between the light shapes and the dark ones (image 3).

Then it felt like the very light foreground shape on the left didn’t connect with anything else…also you couldn’t really see the similar shapes on the bottom right so I added in more orange…but now I’ve got too much again!!!  so I’ll be working with my trimming shears this morning!

And if you have been, thanks for reading!  Elizabeth