I love this picture, even though it’s an accident. I was trying to take a snapshot of a beautiful sunset from a moving car, and it just didn’t work. Or, rather, it worked better than I could have hoped. It’s not the same sunset-through-trees shot I imagined, but to me it absolutely evokes the experience of being there for the sunset: the fleeting nature of the event, the movement, the delicacy of the tree branches. The bank of backlit clouds becomes a band of color. The branches become waving fronds, bidding farewell to a beautiful day.
Sometimes accident is an artist’s best friend. Years ago, in a small publication now long perished, I read a wonderful essay by Maggie Anderson about the role of accident in art. I don’t think I can retrieve the printed essay, but I particularly remember (I’m paraphrasing, of course) one of Maggie’s observations about why artists should be open to the accidental in making their art. She said that every work of art was a palimpsest containing traces of the artist’s personal history as well as the time in which it was created, the medium, the subject of the piece, the form. I had to look up the word “palimpsest.” It’s still one of my favorite words. Palimpsest. Anomaly. Sfumato. I repeat them like a prayer.
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Mother Wit Writing and Design 