Back to this for just a moment

I was telling someone about that dark rhythm blossom picture. I said that when I started it I only had two things in mind: It had to be made mostly of dark cells and there had to be certain patterns in it.

Before starting it, I had been looking at photos of the sound holes you typically see in violins. There's something elegant about the shapes of those holes. I have no idea why they are shaped like that, but I have no doubt that over the hundreds of years violins have been made they've found that this shape is the most functional for enhancing the sound of the strings as the bow is drawn across them. That shape, then, was the pattern I wanted to see somewhere in this dark picture. And, so, there are two of them, one of which is shown here:

(This photo really illustrates the effect that the shift in shading has on the perception of the cells in different areas of the picture.)

At the top of the picture there are two more shapes. When I was discussing the picture I said, "Those shapes are echoes." That was the first time I'd ever even thought that, let alone said it.

(If you tilt your head to the left while looking at this you might see how the rhythm of the diagonal becomes more pronounced on the right side. I don't know if it depends on whether you have a "dominant" eye.)

The reason I mention it now is that while working on that new picture - the "diagonal blossom" picture - I suddenly heard myself saying, "There have to be echoes in this picture." But, in this new picture, they won't be shaped like the ones above. They'll be responsive to the patterns in the new picture.

When I began working on that dark rhythm one, I knew that the picture was unrelated to most of the other blossom pictures I've made. Nor is the new one related to the older ones, but I find myself questioning whether it's related to the dark rhythm one.

I try not to get too carried away in looking for significance in pictures I make beyond the individual pictures themselves. I don't like the idea that any of my pictures might be considered "metaphorical." If they were, it would imply that I'm trying to create defined patterns or obvious shapes with a specific goal in mind, and that's simply not the case. The dark rhythm blossom is the first - and only - picture of this sort where I had a shape in mind at the start, but that's the only part of the picture I knew would exist. The rest of it developed as the picture progressed.

So, maybe there's something I'm looking for in these. I said in an earlier post that the dark rhythm thing was starting to take on the character of one of the "night song" pictures I had made a while ago. I don't even know if that's true now. I found myself thinking of how Whistler named many of his paintings with musical references. (His most famous painting - the "Whistler's Mother" picture - is actually titled "Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1.")

Maybe I'm - as usual - making more of this than it merits. I honestly have no idea, but since it's begun to bug me I suppose I have to at least acknowledge it. Like many things, perhaps it will come back to me at a later time and I'll remember that I posted something about it. If that's the case, it will be interesting to know if my thinking changes over time. See? Sometimes this blog has a function.