A few weeks ago I was at the airport in Eugene, Oregon, waiting for my flight home. I had an hour to kill, so I do what I usually do at airports: I went for a walk.
Down one hallway I found an art installation with works by artists from the OSLP Arts & Culture program. I'm normally pretty superficial when it comes to my appreciation of art, but this time I paused and really considered each work, asking myself things like "how does this make me feel?" and "what does this remind me of?" The experience was really transforming, and I feel like I came away with many new perspectives.
One piece in particular spoke profoundly to me. It was this painting by Richard Pierce:
I'll be honest: it's not the kind of painting that would usually appeal to me. The bold strokes, aggressive colors, and haphazard squares drawn at seeming random struck me initially as messy and almost anxiety-inducing. But as I looked at it more carefully it struck me that those squares are like windows, each framing a tiny piece of the whole. I stepped closer and looked into one of those windows, noticing how it overlapped other frames, and how the three-dimensional texture of the paint immediately became very important.
I could see shades of color and intent which before had been hidden by the chaos of the bigger picture. I suddenly wished I had a magnifying glass, so I could go even farther!
As I walked back to my gate, I thought about this painting. It reminded me of the Microscope RPG by Ben Robbins, which zooms you iteratively deeper and deeper into a timeline of your own construction. It reminded me of authors like Anne Tyler and Chaim Potok, and of intimate, familiar places like Jan Karon's Mitford. It made me want to write tiny storiesabout little-but-consequential things, recognizing the import what we all do and experience every day.
I've thought a lot more about this painting since then. Every time I look at it, and think about it, I discover new depths and new ways to interpret it. It has affected me, and inspired me.
