My husband and I couldn’t be more different. He’s a “be early to everything” dude, and if my local art store were giving away sable brushes and Belgian truffles, I would struggle to get there on time. He relaxes watching thought-provoking documentaries, I need cutting-edge comedy. One look at his office — compared to my “junk room” piles — gives a visual representation of the fundamental difference. He finds disorder to be chaotic, I find chaos fascinating. I was thinking about that when he came home from his walk with some new photos to show me. 

The ones he shot for himself, show nature in all its beauty, The ones he shot to curry favor with me, are all abstracts, urban decay — testimony to the chaos that, to my mind, creates great beauty around us. He showed me this parking lot piece (above) and said, “Look, on the upper right — “It’s an alien sniffing a volcano.” Once he pointed it out, I guess I saw it, but I was struck with the question, “why does it always have to look like something?”  

 I guess for him, it’s a way to impose, if not order, at least a point of reference. When he shoots these photos for me, he is always mindful of color, light, shade, shape, and composition. Once he has those things nailed, he takes the shot, but he is still (I guess) left with a need to define it.  

Well, naturally I had to research this need to identify “the familiar” in abstract art — and the explanation could not be more obvious. Our brains are wired to “categorize information, find patterns, and reduce the complex into understandable, comfortable concepts.”

I’m fairly sure my brain doesn’t work that way. The colors and shapes hit me on a level far below (or above) the level needing analysis. It just moves me. It never occurs to me that it has to be something. It already is something. Something profound, and beautiful, and chaotic.  He may think that makes me crazy, but I’m not the one seeing Aliens sniffing Volcanoes.