I am wondering about why some people care so much about how things look. I know I do. I notice when things in my world don’t look too good generally they don’t work so well either. The thoughtlessness of design often crosses both appearance and utility. I see the outside color of cars that don’t look right with their interiors, I crave to color the 4 different levels of the SFO airport parking garage different colors so people like me can remember which floor their car is parked on. I keep having to buy different dog collars because the color and pattern doesn’t aesthetically fit the personality or color of my dog Maisey. I literally have taken paint and adjusted a color on a new pair of running shoes just so I could wear them.
I am not proud of this affliction—I can’t remember a time I didn’t have it but I can imagine how easy it would be to not carry this concern. Artists and creative people in general tend to have this sensitivity to their environment. A work around to these feelings is achieved by taking a small piece of the world and re creating it exactly as you desire. This is usually results in some form of Art. So no matter what is going on around you, no matter how everything else looks or feels at least you have contributed something, that according to you, it is exactly as it should be.
My daughter, Hannah, is applying to college and let me read some of her ideas and rough drafts of things she was thinking of writing about. In one of them she too shares her experience of feeling this unease with parts of her surroundings…like mine hers began at an early age.
“After leaving the beauty of my childhood home, filled with sophisticated colors of oak, natural browns and burnt oranges, one can imagine my immediate revulsion at the neon storefront signs on beige mealy walls flying past me on my drive to school. I vehemently abhorred nearly every graphic decision at my middle school, our mascot the sharp, menacing blue-sky lion, the staid lettering of the Saint Mark’s School sign I had to pass each morning. What bothered me most was when the graphic design and typography did not match the feeling of the particular institution or person. To me, it was nothing more than misrepresentation.”
Apart from feeling guilty for obviously passing this irksome trait on to her, it just kind of hit me how unusual it is for a 3rd grader to be concerning themselves with how things look and feel. Is this normal?
Clearly she is already one of those people who fall into the hyper visually sensitive camp. Is it that this small minority of overly sensitive people should be put in charge to re-order the World to be more aesthetic way, so that everything relates and works better? (Am I hearing a deafening Hell Yes!) Or is it that we should to be relegated to a small band of people who just need to make their Art and get over it?
For me there is no getting over it. It is just in my DNA. So for now, in my spare time, I plan to do whatever I can to remake the World. One painting at a time.
Which camp are you in? And more importantly, if you did somehow get over this affliction, please let the rest of us know.
Visually yours, Nicholas
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Hi! I’m
Nicholas Wilton
the founder of Art2Life.
With over 20 years experience as a working artist and educator, I’ve developed a systematic approach that brings authenticity, spontaneity and joy back into the creative process.
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Nick and Hannah,
I have exactly the same trait. I would never call it an affliction. It is truly a gift, which you use to create your art, Hannah will use in her life and career and I use to create beautiful interiors (and paintings with the help of your skilled eye). We beautify our surroundings. Yes, the price is that we see, what does not work so well.
And I agree absolutely with your suggestion to paint the concrete maze of SFO park house in beautiful and very different colors each floor.
Lena
personally, i like to sort my laundry not by lights/darks but by palette. sooo pleasing. your illustration pictures the absolute best example of the worst design — athletic shoes — who on earth designs those things?
Nick and Hannah, the phrase I use to explain what you describe is “visually disturbing”. It can be applied to objects, fonts, graphics, the way clothes fit and people. once i came up with this description, my friends and family finally understood what I see, and what they don’t. More than visual, it strikes an off putting chord that hits internally. thanks for opening the discussion!
Yes, I fall into the sensitive camp too, so I really enjoyed reading about you and Hannah. I only recently discovered I’m not alone in this. Some aspects I could do without– it would be lovely to leave the house in a mess sometimes or not care that the bathroom tile is just plain ugly. But I think it just goes with the territory of needing to make things beautiful and I think of that as a gift to be shared. Some in my family call it perfectionism though! But I can always go into my studio and make things just as I want them…
I know about the shoes! It was so hard to even post the picture…
Pick me! I am so the same way. It can be very irritating to people Round me at times. But I simply cannot help myself. it is part of my DNA too.
Here’s to all of my fellow soldiers of the aesthetic order!
The artist/architect Hundertwasser (1928-2000)…(who call also called himself a “building doctor” because he restructured and modified existing buildings) ….created an apartment building in Vienna wherein the residents were encouraged to design/re-work/art-ify the outside of their windows “as long in all directions as they can reach” with mosaics and paint…(he actually wrote into the residents’ contracts that they were allowed to do this)….he believed in people’s need to give individualistic expression to their surroundings….he said when someone reaches out their window – even if that’s the only piece of property they have where they can “advertise” their creativity to the world – and makes designs and so forth,….then they are saying “here I am….I’m alive and creative and the house I live in can be beautiful and not simply a sterile & antiseptic cage that looks the same as all the others”….
There is a website about him – hundertwasser.com – and there are several books about him and by him…he was all about the subject of this discussion….and if you have not heard of him, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn of Hundertwasser….his life was an example of creativity….my wife Caroline & I travelled to Austria to see his works and his museum – what a journey ….everybody, go there if you can!
Ishaq Deis