ThriveWisely

The abstraction is often the most definitive form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. –Georgia O’Keefe

On Tuesday, I made the snap decision to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see an exhibit I had been longing to see for months…Georgia O’Keefe: Circling Around Abstraction.

As I pulled up and parked, I noticed multiple school busses loading and unloading and cynically thought, ‘well, this will be interesting.’ And it was–without any cynicism at all.

As I entered the exhibition space, I was soon swept up in the dynamism in Georgia’s form and color and, of course, energy. I wandered from painting to painting consumed…and then I heard the voice of a docent speaking with a school group made up of what I would estimate to be 8-9 year olds. “What do you make of this? And that?” She encouraged the children to interact with what they were seeing. I kept on my journey through the exhibit, with my ears pricked.

The woman–the docent–directed the children’s attention to a painting, Abstraction White Rose, and asked what the children saw. Immediately, one of the children replied excitedly, “I sea a girl eating ice cream!!” and others echoed, “OOO, I see that, too!” Of course, I had to check it out. When the children had moved on, I took my place in front of the painting…and looked…and looked. I couldn’t see it. Where was she, this girl eating ice cream? What was clouding my vision? Was this the ‘intangible thing’ that could only be found through abstraction?

I paused. And lowered my eyes. And raised them again. Though I still could not see a figure eating ice cream, I could sense the lightness, the playfulness, of that girl. And I smiled and shook my head–for trying so hard to see and define absolutely. I stepped back and simply allowed the abstraction to be what it was. Allowed it to encompass all the experience and emotion that it could be and was intended to be. Allowed the colors and lines and spaces to hold all that could not be grasped in her.

I loved her spirit and her fearlessness and courageous nature–and all that I cannot define–even more than before. And I found a place to love what is intangible in me, though it remains unnamed.
What will you do to honor and express the ‘intangible thing’ in you that refuses to be pinned down–that is glorious in the abstract?