How to Edit a Landscape with Help from Twyla Tharp

How do you decide what elements to include in a landscape? I am regularly challenged by this. I typically want to paint it all... every damn leaf.  I watch other plein air painters include three people, not twenty, move a tree, change a tree shape, omit a building, or add clouds to a clear sky, without a hesitation. Exclusion for me is an inaccuracy, maybe a lie. I think plein air paintings are creating a moment of history. Cave walls tell us about the animals present, and sometimes the dress of the day… Not that I expect my paintings to last millennia.  Yet, I do see merit in editing for the composition especially.

Over the last couple weeks I began savoring a Christmas gift, reading, not too fast, Twyla Tharp’s 2003, The Creative Habit. Her stories of musicians, writers, and artists of all kinds are entertaining in themselves, but the exercises she suggests have inspired me. They are different from many other creativity books I've read. The one I want to wax on about, is led into with a story about Neil Simon, which you'll have to read for yourself.

Back to the challenge of editing a painting. Twyla talks about the power of seeing, you know, like Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by watching.” She recommends watching a couple and making a list of their actions and gestures until you have twenty. He puts his arm around her, she picks a piece of lint from his coat, she crosses her legs, he man splays, she pulls a Kleenex from her pocket, she blows her nose. It’s not hard, to list twenty items in a brief time, Twyla
comments. The second phase of the exercise is to watch another couple and list the actions that please you aesthetically or emotionally. A sign of tenderness in a touch on the arm, the slide of sunglasses onto the head, to see something more clearly, an elbow jab with a laugh, a slight step back at some news. Now judgement is added to powers of observation, and being selective becomes essential. 

Twyla’s point is that what catches your fancy is not as important as the difference between the two lists. What one includes or edits speaks to how you see the world. My thought is that what catches my fancy in a scene are the items I’m going to paint with more intention, might even be my focal point. And, if not my focal point, I will create a relationship to it… place it where it best tells the story I am painting. 

Once again, Twyla danced me into a new way of thinking.

As I wrap up this post, it reminds me of another one, I wrote a while back on making word lists to create a more accurate and interesting piece of writing. That process, coupled with asking yourself, what pleases you emotionally or aesthetically, offers another way to consider what to edit. This link will get you to it Lexicons and Writing. And, "That reminds me of..." is as always another powerful creativity prompt.

Photo: From Twyla Tharp Pinterest Page
Painting: Waiting for the Magic, Mary Longe, 2019, 16x20" Oil on Canvas

The Cat in the Hat and the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

“What would you do if your mother asked you?”

This is the last sentence of the Cat in the Hat. It’s asked after, as you likely recall, Cat through acts of entertainment, causes exponential messes in the children’s house that get cleaned up in the nick of time. Mother walks in and asks Conrad and Sally, “What did you do while I was out?” 

I’ve had a Cat in the Hat morning. When stowing plates and bowls in cupboards, followed by a spatula and peeler in a utensil drawer, I found I could barely pull the drawer wide enough to get out a knife, let alone get at whatever was blocking its opening. Piece-by-piece I remove enough to dislodge the offending item… my nemesis, the sharp, pointy and painful meat thermometer that stabs regularly, no matter how deep I place it in the drawer. 

Having had way too many discussions lately about the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and rather than jam the damn thermometer in the back corner, I emptied the contents on two countertops and the kitchen table, and attempted to ask myself if any of the items bring me joy.  (It occurred to me at that moment that seeing all the stuff spewed everywhere is a stupid time to ask the question.)

I removed the five dividers and liner, washed them and reimagined the space. I moved one of the dividers containing openers and closers (rubber discs, can opener, cork screws, wine stops, etc.) to another drawer which had to be rearranged first, and before that, wiped clean. Skewers moved to a shelf high in a cupboard, risking oblivion, but better than discarding, I reasoned. The shelf below them held my mom’s box of recipes, which surfaced in a recent conversation about hot chicken salad with potato chips… a dish she served at a Coke-tail party before prom in 1969. Of course, I had to find the recipe. That led to photos, a text to my friend and eventually putting away the step stool in the laundry room.  

Damn, I’d been using the top of the dryer as an emergency holding area since the doorbell rung on Christmas Eve. It was piled with wrapping paper, a wood wine rack, a package to be shipped, dirty cloth napkins – the only items that should be there, an empty cat-toy box, a huge Tupperware full of bags of nuts and seeds, and bags, lots of bags… brown paper grocery bags, bags with nice handles and pretty sides, plastic bags thick enough for cat litter disposal, and bags to be recycled at the grocery store. Of course, it didn’t look as organized as I just described it; it looked more like the kitty’s litter box. 

“And this mess is so big 
And so deep and so tall, 
We cannot pick it up. 
There is no way at all!” 

I started a wash and cleared the top of the machines, which led me upstairs to the closet where my wrapping supplies are stored. I flipped. I jammed the tissue into the bag of rolls of happy paper, inside that disaster pit. I’d had enough. 

Returning to the kitchen, I easily reopened the now tidy kitchen drawer to grab the wine bottle-opener and discovered, in the last of the debris, an item offering true joy - a meat-thermometer sheath, free from Sur la Table, that forever renders my nemesis impotent. 

Conrad and Sally never answered mother.  Maybe neither would I. I didn’t accomplish one thing I had planned.