An Analysis of Art

A couple of days ago, Laura and I went on a date to Color Me Mine, after getting some dinner from Tepanyaki (as a side note, our chef was from Indonesia, and I got to talk to him in Bahasa Indon!). When we arrived, we both picked out some cool looking curvy cups deals, and got to work in painting them. Well, at least did- after thinking about a general idea of what I wanted to do for about a minute, I dived right in and started to paint the outside of the cup in a light-blue color, using wide brush strokes with a large brush to get the job done as efficiently as I could manage. While I had no particular pattern in mind, I knew that I wanted the outside to be blue with brown stuff painted on it, and the inside to be brown with blue stuff painted on it. So, after painting the outside blue, I proceeded to paint the handle brown, and though I did as good of a job as I could to not touch the brown paintbrush to the blue parts I had just colored, I failed miserably in a few instances (as you can see from the pictures that Laura will post- and for those that know me, you know that I am not by nature an artisticly minded person). With that done, I proceeded to paint the inside of the cup a deep brown color, again with the wide brush and wide strokes. I was actually having a lot of fun! After that, I grabbed a thin brush and started to paint whatever came to mind on the outside of the cup. At first I painted a large brown circle in the middle of the cup, then a large X on the side, then another thin curvey X next to the circle, and so on- at the end, I had a very asymmetric pattern that looked like something a 2 year old could have easily produced- but it was mine! And so I did something similar on the inside- a large, think line, a squigley line, some dots, and the typcial S + L on different sides. I looked at Laura and proudly showed her my creation, suspecting that she would be roughly along the lines of completeness as I was.

But it was not to be so. She, being the amazing and meticulous person that she is, was just getting finised taping off sections of the cup that she wanted to remain without color, to maintain a striped pattern all around the cup. The then proceeded to paint each non-taped off section a different color with a thin brush, using short, precise strokes so as not to get the wrong color in any one section. Watching her was really interesting- she looked as though she was trying to solve a complex mathematical equation, with her cute brow furrowed and her eyes straining to see every possible detail, and her hands carefully moving each brush stroke, so as not to make any mistakes. After she was done with this task, she removed the striping tape and set it aside, now to paint the handle. In much the same way, she taped off the cup section around the handle, to avoid my mistakes of splattering the cup with handle-paint. She added a very cutely painted date stamp to the handle to commemorate the occasion, and then proceeded to decorate the larger stripes on the side with patterns in the opposite color, to beautify that part of the cup, again using the tape to make sure her design was at or near perfect. On the inside, she carefully decided what she wanted to do, and then did it with precision, adding in colors and patterns and words carefully and deliberately. After about another hour after I was done, she declared that she was also done, and that it was time to leave.
As you can see, in the post I have described ad naseum what could easily have been seen in a minutes analysis of the cups themselves- Laura is a careful, wonderful perfectionist (and I use that term with a positive connotation- I wish I was more like that), making sure that each move she makes is calculated to help her achieve her over-arching goal, which she always has. She judges herself not so much on the standards that the world sets for her as her own sense that she knows that if she can do something well, she should do it as good as she possibly can, otherwise it's of no value. I, on the other hand, am almost the exact opposite- I am quite content to have a very basic idea of what I am going to try to accomplish (in this case, paint a cup), and then moving towards that goal as best as I see fit in the moment. If something else looks more fun then what I am currently doing, I will do that ("hmmm... I think I want to paint a circle... No! How about an X!"). Though I care about what I am doing, I am more concerned with getting it done quickly then I am with getting it done exactly right. And I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that I am not good at some things, and quite possibly never will be- therefore, I do not hold myself to any standard at all in determining whether or not I have completed a task in a satisfactory manner. Now, before my wife makes me sleep on the couch, I must say this- I envy her amazing talents and her remarkable ability to focus and perfect what she is making or doing. I have never known someone so able to focus on a big picture goal and do the little things along the way to make her goal a reality. Long ago, she said to herself "I want to get into nursing school at BYU." So, she accomplished everything she needed to along the way, including getting a 4.0 in college and all the other requirements needed for that. And though I am easily distracted if something more "fun" comes along, that does not mean I am going to leave my wife :-)! Mostly because there is no one I can imagine that is more fun then her! Anyway, if you are to this point, thank you for reading the wall of text that is my psycological analysis of the artwork that Laura and I produced. Thank you for reading!

P.S. And rememeber to check out www.randomravingramblings.blogspot.com if you are interested to hear my take on life outside of me and Laura. Thanks for reading!