Relaxation
[First published January 2016; this group of paintings went on to be displayed in the Prayer Chapel at The Falls Church Anglican.]
One hundred and twenty-five characters. That’s all. Including spaces and punctuation.
That was all I was allowed to write for my artist’s statement to accompany my exhibit at the National Institutes of Health. Ask any artist—pretty much any of them will say that writing an artist’s statement is a very difficult endeavor. And to do it in 125 characters? Daunting.
I don’t even post on Twitter, which would have given me at least a little practice in being really concise.
After ruminating for a bit (like, oh, a month or six weeks or so), the deadline loomed. So I wrote down words I wanted to include and counted up how many letters there were in each, then began to string them together like beads. Here is what I came up with:
Carolyn Marshall Wright’s watercolors capture impressionistic moments – of mystery, of connection – in luminous immediacy.
One hundred and twenty-four characters, thank you very much!
If you like the artist’s statement, you’ll like the art even more. Here is another piece from the show, which runs through March 4 in the Hatfield Building at NIH.
