Pam Mills came by today to help select paintings to include in our upcoming exhibit. I'd set out all the paintings I thought might be pertinent along the walls. She paced around, moving this one to over there, and that one to over here. It took about half an hour. By the end, all but fifteen of them were in the "not for this show" stack, and the remaining ones were in small groups.
There was something about how Pam chose the groupings that brought out what each painting was about. It seemed as though she was fixing on relatively unimportant details - on color, or on continuing the swoop of a line from one painting through to the next. This was enough to invite the mind to trust that there was meaning in the juxtaposition.
"It's not about whether it's a good painting," she told me. "It's about whether it forms a meaningful whole." Like the difference between a sentence and an essay.
There was something about how Pam chose the groupings that brought out what each painting was about. It seemed as though she was fixing on relatively unimportant details - on color, or on continuing the swoop of a line from one painting through to the next. This was enough to invite the mind to trust that there was meaning in the juxtaposition.
"It's not about whether it's a good painting," she told me. "It's about whether it forms a meaningful whole." Like the difference between a sentence and an essay.
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