Pattern, Pattern Everywhere

My most recent painting caused me to think quite a bit about patterns, and more importantly, seeing patterns.

#198 - Block Island Gull - 5" x 7" - paper

I tried painting the water by first looking for patterns in the water. I found this to be difficult and I really had to slow down and stare at the picture. The reason I gave this a try was because of something Kat said to me awhile back.

This is a picture of my friend's family cabin. To say I love the place would be an understatement. The main cabin was built 100 years go and one of the many charms is the masonry work, which was done by my friend's grandfather. Here is one of the chimneys and I would like to try and paint it some day.

Awhile back I showed this picture to Kat and asked her how to approach something that contained so much detail. She looked at the picture briefly and declared that she would approach it by focusing on the patterns in the stones. She also tried to point out what she was seeing. I could see that she saw it, but I didn't really see it. However, the idea must have been rumbling around in my head because it came back to me when I decided to do the gull painting.

Kristin Nicholas’ gorgeous new book, Crafting A Patterned Home, arrived in the mail on the same day I finished the gull painting. After flipping through and looking at all of the beautiful pictures, I have slowed down and am reading several pages each day. In the first few pages, she talks about how our lives are filled with visual patterns and she mentions being fascinated with the floral-patterned wallpaper in her bedroom, as a child. Currently, I've read up to page 10 and I can speculate with a fair amount of certainty that Kristin would also easily see the patterns in the stones.

What's interesting to me is the difference in what each of us sees because of the underlying architecture of our brains and what we train our brains to do. By profession, I am an accountant. I am not a scientist, so this conclusion is armchair-thinking on my part. 

By the way I am not completely inept at seeing patterns. If I stay in the world of orderly ones, I'm fine. In fact, I think it's the reason I am drawn to the work of Louis Sullivan, the architect. His ornamentation consists of wild, detailed, patterns, but there is always order or symmetry in them.