Monday, May 25, 2009

Principles Create an Ideal

Space is used by artists to create harmony in their work. Harmony is a unified feeling throughout the piece that is achieved through the use of all the design principles. A few of these design principles are harmony, variety and rhythm. Harmony pulls similar elements together. Variety finds beauty in opposites. Rhythm creates movement in a work by finding direction and a pattern, even if it's hard to see.

I love the way these artistic guidelines can be interpreted differently by different artists, but they all generally create the same result- attractive art. Principles are just that, they are guiding thoughts or "rules" (the term is used loosely) commonly agreed upon to create order. This order represents an ideal. This could be a community ideal. An artistic ideal. A family ideal. Whatever human relational ideal is needed - the investigation of the harmony, the variety, and even the rhythm can shed appreciation on a sometimes chaotic situation.

There are people that bring something that clashes with the group. There are people that are the glue and the unifier in the group. There are people that lead and bring direction to groups. This is why ART imitates LIFE. Art simply takes the reality of what works in the world. Even if what works is opposing the group or the crowd and shows us the beauty in that. We need the entire picture for wholeness. We need the feeling of hunger as well as fullness. We need the emptiness as well as the abundance. We need the longing for others as well as content companionship. Sometimes I need to be reminded of that.