It's a Puzzle

Sam loves to do jigsaw puzzles. It is a quiet, peaceful hobby, and one he is very good at. I am not sure how he strategizes his game, but he can put the pieces together quickly and with an air-punching cheer at the end. "Puzzle" was a movie that came out this summer, and seemed to be made just for my son, (at least from the trailers enticing us to go). Sam got a kick out of the actual puzzle piece moments, but the storyline fell short of an air-punching cheer at the end. With a plot that involved pieces coming together, there should have been an over-arching theme with characters coming together in a way that symbolizes the satisfaction of a puzzler fitting in his final piece. Imagine working on a 1000 piece puzzle only to not have the last piece? You can't run your hand over the surface and feel like you accomplished the impossible. Not with a piece missing. We left the theater feeling as if a piece was missing somewhere.

I think there must be a gene that gets passed down for doing puzzles. Sam is a clone of his father and they can both speed through Suduko and they can both unscramble a jumble without writing all the letters in different ways on the side of the paper. I love puzzles too, but unlike my son who likes to solve them, I think I make my life harder by creating them. The challenge is irresistible to me. I never begin writing with an outline for a story. I never start my paintings with a full composition in mind. I start where I start and I travel through the page or the canvas in some sort of creepy hypnotic state. The challenge to get it all right by the end is part of the joy of the puzzle and defines creativity for me. My art is always a puzzle in search of a solution.

My Painting of Paris from 10 years ago

Norman and I went to Paris for our 25th wedding anniversary and I came back with tons of photos as inspiration for a painting. Imagine going to Paris with an artist? He was such a good sport during that trip, following me around all the museums. Every time he posed with a sculpture, he made me laugh. I used my images from Paris to create a painting on my new easel the family bought me for my birthday that year. I experimented by painting in the style of Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and all of my other favorite artists. I did not plan out a composition, but simply started painting each image and then adding the next one, fitting the parts together as I went, kind of like a puzzle.

Detail of the ballerina from my painting

Degas' sculpture of a fourteen-year-old dancer was the first thing I painted on the canvas. I'll never forget Zach coming down the stairs and staring at my painting. He cocked his head and asked why I was painting Serena Williams. "It is not a picture of a tennis player!" I exclaimed. "It is a painting of a bronze ballerina!" The little ballerina was all by herself on the canvas with no connection to Paris or art or any other theme, so I suppose he made a good guess. All I knew was that she had to be in my painting, so I began with her. She was the beginning of my puzzle. I wasn't sure what was going next, but she shined as brilliantly as the real sculpture throughout the process. If I did it again, she might be in a very different place and it would be a very different puzzle with a very different solution. All I am sure of is that I get much joy out of the final stroke, just as Sam does with his final piece.

Movies should offer us entertainment and some sort of message. They should not be a puzzle with a piece missing. And our lives should be filled with the pieces that make us happy, arranged in a way that makes us who we are.