"Paintings With Personality"

"Yellow Cab City" is a large painting done in acrylic on canvas. Every time I see Times Square I am struck by all the lights and noise. This is the first time I have painted it.

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in old and imperfect things, like weather beaten boards, broken glass, cracked sidewalks, and etc. It is characterized by being different, rough, and simple. The wabi-sabi belief is that nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. The opposite of Wabi-sabi is perfection. Wabi-sabi encourages us to slow down and appreciate what is rather than trying to make it impeccable. It is being at peace with ourselves and our surroundings. A wabi-sabi life is easier and quieter; it takes away all that is unnecessary and only keeps what is needed.

In art to create something beautiful out of objects considered ugly would be called wabi-sabi. Recognizing beauty in an object is something that happens between the artist and the subject and depends on the painter's point of view. The wabi-sabi aesthetic uses the old and everyday for inspiration in making expressive art. It is an approach that encourages artists to enjoy experimenting and not mind accidents or mistakes but to trust themselves. Wabi-sabi says the artist can't have a connection with their audience unless they paint their true feelings and that art without emotion is empty.

We find wabi-sabi subjects through the use of our senses: Paint the smell you encounter when you walk into a flower shop or the sound of the wind chimes hanging from a neighbor's house. Sculpt the sound of pebbles on the shore when moved by the surf or the feel of an elderly friend's face. Memory can also make a wabi-sabi subject: Paint the beautiful day at a favorite vacation spot from your childhood or the time when your children were little and followed you everywhere like little ducklings.

Wabi-sabi art generally has a lot of texture with smooth areas saved for a resting place for the eyes. Texture shows intricacy and subtlety and can give meaning to even the most elementary pieces and reduce the most complicated subjects down to their essential components. It leaves desire for perfection in art behind and renews recognition of simple beauty. We find new purpose in old forgotten things and love them all over again.

We live with imperfection and to insist on perfection is to insist on the impossible. To try to achieve perfection in creating art would keep us from ever completing anything and that would be to fail as artists. In knowing that nothing is perfect we gain freedom. A goal of enjoying the process is a Wabi-sabi experience.

To explain wabi-sabi would be like disclosing who a person is by talking about their height, weight, or hair color. That might be how they look, but is not who they are. In wabi-sabi we have to look past what is apparent to what is inside, it is something that is felt, not explained. Just as art is felt and is unexplainable. To describe art only tells us how it looks but can't say anything about the emotion, that is up to each viewer.

Do you lead a wabi-sabi life? Are you relaxed and enjoying the process? Comment below.