Coyote Jumble

acrylic on canvas – 14″ X 18″
© 2019 Sandra Ware

Cool and warm
Curved, jagged, and straight
Color and form
Harmonious tumble

Abstract pure
No content…but wait
Redoubt secure
Beginning to crumble

Appearing clear
As surely as fate
An image queer
To slap me humble

Our minds insist
To co-create
Abstraction pure
Was sure to stumble

A Trickster’s win
There’s no debate
My pride lies in
Coyote Jumble

 © 2016 Sandra Ware

“All art constantly aspires to the condition of music.”
                      Walter Pater – The School of Giorgione

This famous quote suggests that the ultimate goal of art is the achievement of the purity possessed by music – form without content.

Coyote Jumble started with that premise, though in very humble guise. The original version was born in a collage workshop and was executed on a small white cardboard rectangle with torn bits of construction paper.

Heretofore, I had never done an abstract, but was intrigued by the possibility that I could construct a work that owed its charms purely to the balance of color and form.

It seemed to me I had succeeded in this lofty goal, and so decided to memorialize what I had accomplished in a painting that duplicated the construction paper work.

It was not long however, that I began to see something in the arrangement of those torn bits. Wasn’t that a black coyote slinking about. And then, surely that was not a shadow of the roadrunner at bottom left…and oh no…couldn’t that big round thing be the Acme bomb!!!

So the Trickster was having his fun with the pretensions of the artist. And despite what my mind was showing me, I still loved the composition. Maybe I loved it even more. The painting got painted.
So, what do you see?