Playing Tricks

Ice-cream Hangup, by Steven Boone

I enjoy surprise in life and art. Surprise is what challenges our perception, and makes us wonder. Most people prefer predictability because it offers a sense of safety of sorts, and scientists need the laws of nature to be fixed in order to compute and invent, but oddity and absurdity are never far away. In fact, chaos is ever present, and scientists must allow for it in equations. This is why weather will never be absolutely predictable. All living things depend on predictability to survive and prosper, but the universe will forever be playing tricks.

In art, the arena allows for chaos and surprise. The surrealists made paintings depicting melting watches, flying cows, or trees growing in mid-air. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) painted bold portraits with faces that had two eyes on one side and a mouth on the other. 

Portrait by Pablo Picasso

I like the unusual, and it often comes into my artwork as well.

A man, walking past a billboard. Berlin, Germany.