Study in Moderation № 2, lighting from above
This is my second attempt at relaxing my cutting and laying execution. I am a step—or a mosaic—closer to reaching my objective, but I’m not there yet. This is much looser for me in both precision of cuts and laying of the pieces. Still, I found myself lining things up too much and had redo to relax some of my background rows. And, I did not exactly end up, at the top, where I started at the bottom, did i?
Ah well, I have made a wee bit more progress. It is interesting how difficult it is change my habit of working, my sensibility of how it should be done. I’m not trying to change things permanently—there is a time and place for precision—but just to explore less precision when it is not necessary.
The spring clips make such graceful and elegant lines, so it will be fascinating to see how relaxed I can get in working around the clips. They seem to almost call for a refined approach. This one is less refined than the first one.
Study in Moderation № 2, side perspective
Since about 2012, I have flirted with trying to relax my execution style. I would do a couple of pieces with this objective, but somehow would drift back to something that I felt needed more precision.
For now, I’m tired of that kind of precision, the kind that I began to feel was in charge of me. I guess what I’m trying to do is change my relationship with precision so that it is not my standard way of working, but an approach that I may or may not choose to employ. First I’ve got to kick the habit.
I was talking with a friend and fellow mosaicist the other day and we were talking about exercising a lot of control in our mosaic execution. I was saying how I was determined to learn to relax my technique, that I was going to learn to control my precision by making it sloppy.
That seems to be the gist of it.