Monday, April 27, 2009

Mowing is Like Art

When I was young and had to mow the yard I tended to avoid it as best I could. It was always more fun to go hang out with my friends than doing yard work around the house. My father always made sure I took care of the responsibility though.

Now as an adult I find yardwork, especially mowing to be a lot more enjoyable. It is not because of the tools. I still use a good old push mower. The part I like is the part that reminds me of working on a piece of art.

When I’m working on a painting, a drawing or with some other type of media, one of my favorite parts is the part when you realize everything is done. You’ve worked through all of the design issues. You’ve executed all of the rendering skills needed to bring the work to completion. All that remains is the clean-up. Erase a few extraneous foundation lines. Clean up some corners, close some gaps, remove a few smudges. In other words, doing the polishing.

At that moment you get the brain working in a different mode and you can start to take in the object you just created. You give it that final dusting off so that you can reveal it to the world. It is one of most satisfying moments in the creation process for me.

As I mowed the yard this weekend and thought about the dozens of times I will have to repeat the ritual throughout the rest of this year, I actually looked forward to the process. As each swipe of the spinning blades trims that grass down to a uniform height and the clean design work starts to show through, that feeling emerges and I know that the presentation will once again be worth it.

Now all I have to do is find some really big frames.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mystic Moondust was deleted on FB... I am now under Cynthia Walton Moon... I miss our conversations :)