Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Visual Clutter

Pug On Rug In A Frame, Backed By Wallpaper, Pittsburgh, 2015




There are quite a few people on both sides of the family who paint.  This masterpiece was rendered by my mother-in-law several years ago of a dog who is now dead.  Bea feels less dead in this portrait than I'm sure she appears at the back of the garden in her grave.  But this isn't about that.  No.  This is about visual clutter, which this is a prime example of.  What do we have here?  A wall, covered in hideous wallpaper, a framed and mercifully matted (blessed negative space!) painting of a dog lying on a bright and busily patterned rug.  Just looking at this makes me want to have a seizure.  There is Too Much Going On!  The eye barely knows what to look at, and even then the brain doesn't know what to think.  This sort of artwork/wallpaper pairing should be avoided at all costs.  And since I am railing against a wall that is in my own home, I've begun to remove the wallpaper.  I wish I could put the dog portrait in the attic, but I am forbidden from doing that, at least as long as my mother-in-law is alive.

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