Asymptomatic

The more I think on it, the more my thoughts head to the inevitable conclusion that real design skills are something granted to you by either a higher power, genetic makeup, or sheer luck. More to the point, neither god nor my genes have granted me any worthwhile natural knack for design, and that the only way to obtain such is by having some epiphany involving hitting my head, doing psychadelics, or divine intervention.

I keep hoping that I'll lay down one night, head full of inspiration that I can do naught with visually, and wake up with a profound understanding of layout, color, and aesthetics that I had lacked the night before. As if the information could sink into my brain by osmosis by laying on the Everest-like mound of design books I've purchased and not yet intuited.

What I need is a formula that I can use to plot beauty. Follow a flowchart to design nirvana. If there was just a path I could follow to get out one great intentional design, I'm sure I could replicate the process. I think....

We had a conference with Abby's first grade teacher recently, during which she expressed mild concern over Abby's interest in school. She asked us specifically if anything really motivates Abby, since she doesn't seem to do anything more than the necessary work in her academics. While she's perfectly capable of doing the work, she doesn't really get enthusiastic about it.

Abby's always been her own self, and the one thing that she really does get enthused about is art. Abby really likes to draw, and even her teacher remarked that she's significantly advanced compared to her peers. She notices details that they don't and I have noticed that she is able to put abstract images on paper that I wouldn't even have thought of.

There is one particular crayon-coloring that sticks in memory. It was one of those "color this - win lunch" things that they give the kids at Ron's Schoolhouse - a picture of a backpack. I think Berta or I idly asked her to draw some things in around the backpack, not really specifying, but I was really expecting some basic school-related doodles. Instead, Abby drew a bunch of things to scale with the backpack. Some in the foreground, some in the background. There was even someone's foot and leg visible from behind the bag, and it amazed me that she could put the backpack in this whole scene - just see it in her mind and draw it....

Our house has a lot of bare walls. I think that we don't know how to decorate. One thing that we've thought we could do is get some art to hang around. As it turns out, art is hard.

Recently Abby's elementary school held a student art exhibition. They've been creating art all year based on classical works. One of the artists they were emulating was Piet Mondrian. I knew of Mondrian from his strange paintings of primary-colored straight lines and boxes, but I did not know of anything else he had painted. When I saw his "Grey Tree" exemplar among the 2nd-grade recreations, I was struck by it in a way that I had not thought about art before.

Of course, I can't hang that painting in my house, and it seems kind of absurd to get a poster reproduction of the thing to hang in my livingroom over the fireplace. So apart from Abby's faithful reproductions of classical art, what can I put on display in the house?...