Making Sense Out of Chaos

Our houseplants all go outside on the terrace in the summer, and in the winter they're on tables near the front windows, under plant lights. Unlike the summer arrangement, when each one is in its ideal growing spot, shown off to best advantage, and augmented with flowering annuals, the winter situation is crowded. Every plant gets plenty of water and food and light, but there's no way I can give each one exactly what it needs. Nor is the arrangement nearly as attractive; we're talking about survival in limited space.

Because of that, I've felt a lot less compelled to draw or paint the plants indoors. Each is competing with the next one, so you can't even see the beautiful leaves of the begonias, or the lacy foliage of the scented geraniums, or the sculptural succulents. They're all crammed together in a cluttered busy-ness that rivals any English cottage garden for visual competition. Nevertheless, the other night, I just felt like something was prompting me to have a go -- maybe it was the felt-like foliage of that ridiculously enormous Kalanchoe beharensis "Fang", in the center.

I propped my watercolor box on the chair near my knee, and started painting directly, laying down one color after another, as quickly as I could, to try to capture the energy and chaotic over-crowding of the scene before me. The terracotta pots and wooden table gave the picture a little bit of unification and structure, but basically there wasn't any overall composition to be had. Nor were there strong shapes - just the big fleshy leaves of "Fang". The geranium in the background, the butterfly-like triangles of the oxalis, the succulents, and the busy needles of the rosemary plant were all similar enough in size to compete with each other, but not stand out. I just kept at it, adding brushstrokes, dashes, lines, dots. Once all the color was on the page, I went back with a pen and sketched in some loose shapes and lines, and finally added the vertical window blinds in the background with watercolor.

The only solution, it had seemed, was just to go for the visual clutter. Feeling dubious, I posted the image on Instagram, with the slightly apologetic comment, "Once again, fascinated by the busyness of plants." A little while later, my friend Michael Szpaskowski and I had this exchange:

Michael: "And that that ‘busyness’ becomes the compositional imperative here is great. Both truthful (I’m not saying that artistic truth is always of this nature of course) and very beautiful."

Beth: "It is both the compositional imperative and its greatest obstacle. The urge is to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order, but that wouldn't be true. So then what do you do?...I like aspects of it, but it still doesn't entirely work for me. Tonight I was thinking maybe if I tried it from a high angle, the ovals of the tops of the pots would give a compositional rhythm that might unify the picture a little more. But not sure if I have the energy for another try!"

Michael: "Oh it is precisely its ‘awkwardness’ that I find so winning!"

This was a very helpful exchange, because when I studied the image again with his words in mind, I realized that it was actually OK not to have a strong and obvious composition or structure; instead there's color and life dancing all over the image, and the loose horizontal and vertical lines do just enough work to hold everything within the frame.

Chaos is all around us these days. Here in Quebec, we're in a terrible situation, at or near the peak of the current Omicron wave, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. Yesterday, a government report was obtained and published by RadioCanada, detailing plans to stop trying to isolate COVID patients in hospitals, allow workers to return to work even if they're still ill, accelerate discharges, decrease the level of care if necessary in order to provide at least some care to more people, and even ask patients' families to provide basic care (feeding, cleaning, bed changing, etc) for them in the hospital to free up the staff to do clinical work. It's shocking that it's come to that; the whole system is in danger of breaking down -- and that's in a province with 90% of the people vaccinated with at least two doses. There simply isn't sufficient infrastructure to deal with this many patients when we don't have enough staffed acute care beds, and so many healthcare workers are either out sick themselves, or have quit over the past two years. And the government has also made a series of disastrous decisions, such as delaying the booster campaign until Omicron was already upon us. I'm angry about this, frustrated, and worried.

And of course, it's not just COVID that gives us all a sense of uncontrolled chaos: the news from the U.S. is terrible, Europe is in disarray, there may be war in Ukraine, the climate crisis envelops all of us, lots of our friends and family are sick, many of us have had health or psychological problems because of the unremitting stress, or delayed and limited access to care, we can't see the people we want to, or go where we'd like, and the future continues to feel entirely uncertain.

Is it possible, as in the picture, to simply embrace some of that craziness and uncertainty, instead of -- as I wrote to Michael, "trying to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order"? Can we sit with it, and even find some beauty and truth there? That's a hard task, but it seems to me that it's more realistic -- and potentially more helpful -- than fighting and resisting what is.

Since Christmas, I've been starting each day with half an hour of yoga practice. Doing this regularly is new to me. I can feel my body responding slowly to the daily movements: already I'm a little bit stronger, more flexible, with better balance. But I think I've been helped equally by the mental discipline of a daily commitment, conscious breathing, and then the attentive relaxation at the end, followed by some time on my mat and cushion in meditation - even if it's just five minutes of awareness and gratitude for being here, right now. It makes a difference. I still get upset, but I can see that, like the gradual body changes, there's a gradual emotional shift toward greater equanimity in spite of what's going on around me.

There are other ways to encourage a shift: we all need to find what works for ourselves. The only point I'm trying to make is that when we can't change the big, chaotic, confusing, intractable external things, sometimes there is potential movement inside ourselves -- if we're willing to change old habits and ideas, and experiment a little.

Comments

[Peter]

I don,t know if you intended the effect, but the contrast between the leaves you outlined in black and the areas you didn't choose to do that gives the picture a swimming, three-dimensional quality very similar to what I’d see with my glasses off. I'm very impressed!

[Ann Elbourne]

Your blog and paintings made me think of that poem by WH Davies which starts "What is this life if, full of care /We have no time to stand and stare." Your blogs always make me stop, look deep and think. I had to look up the poem - my mind is a ragbag of beginnings. It goes on

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care / We have no time to stand and stare

[Roderick Robinson]

As you know, since August I've endured two separate surgical procedures (one comparatively minor, the other major) at two different NHS hospitals on the border between England and Wales. What surprised me was the comparative calm in both. Absolutely no evidence of the Covid-related problems so gruesomely recounted in The Guardian and by the BBC - both reliable sources of info. When I enquired (you can't keep a good journo down) the answers were vague. mainly centring on the fact that both counties involved - Herefordshire and Worcestershire - are sparsely populated. In both instances I was treated comprehemsively and quickly. Made me wonder what all the fuss was about elsewhere in the UK, notably the north-east, certain large industrial conurbations and the London area. Do you have any first-hand knowledge (ie, from patients who have recently had hospital treatment) that confims the gloominess in the media?

[Susan]

The painting is beautiful and I am oddly fixating on bringing in the rosemary for winter as it winters over fine here in Portland.

[Duchesse]

The tight focus on the last image created the "aha": chaos and colour fill the frame, and absent the the implied "order" of the room, I immerse in it. In times of any kind of chaos, it's been useful to draw in my focus, choosing a framework I can live in, not taking on the whole buzzing thing.

That's what yoga does for me, too.

[Marly Youmans]

You know, Beth, I somehow thought of my old friend Mary Boxley Bullington, who I've known since I was 17 or 18--maybe it's the black outlines mixed with strong tints, the energy and exuberance, the freedom and color...