Reading an article in the
New Yorker about pastry chefs & the evolution of dessert & one particular passage was a great parallel to painting:
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| asafetida |
"The key thing for a cook is to develop a library of flavors that you can recall. If I say to you, 'Apple & cinnamon,' you would click in immediately. 'Yes, apple! Yes, cinnamon!' The library of your mind contains that. But what if I say "Apple, asafetida'? Nothing! You have nothing stored there." He added slyly, "Now, this is a benefit to the chef, because if I do apple and cinnamon and you don't like it you think there's something wrong with me, but if I do apple and asafetida and you don't like it there's something wrong with you." He laughed briefly, professionally. "The development of a pastry chef is not the development of techniques. It is the slow, careful development of a catalogue of savors and flavors, which you can develop the way you develop muscles. There is a logic in every dessert worth eating. Consider the logic of white peach and rich cheese. We must be conditioned not by sight but only by flavor, the tongue, the nose, and the feel in the mouth."
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| Really?, mixed media on paper, 2009 |
An artist who really wants to push her/himself and make something new must develop a cache of flavors as well... but in doing that cannot just "paint" apple & cinnamon over & over again. Doing apple & cinnamon over & over makes you a baker/crafter/artisan not a true artist. I love apple & cinnamon but that combo isn't going to teach me anything. Apple &
asafetida? I have no idea what the hell that is. That is exciting. As an artist, it's my job to push comfort zones stretch our collective ideas of "flavors" because only by letting new information & experience into our lives do we grow & learn as individuals & as a society.
There is a logic in every artwork worth experiencing. However, if you approach said artwork with your own apple/cinnamon baggage, your experience will be that much more skewed. However, if an artist can present you with apple & asafetida, then you are forced to approach like a child & take in something new. What a beautiful thing... if we were really able to take in new experience like a child & notice our own processing with freshness!
