Designers say the eye is guided by the simplest elements of an image. Maybe that’s why we humans find whitespace so compelling; it provides context for the pattern-recognition tendencies of our brains. But truly, it is the unexpected disruption of simplicity that elevates a beautiful scene into one that is sublime.
Snowing outside. Everything beyond my window has been reduced to elemental colors. The sky is gray, the ground is bright white, the trees are black vertical slashes. The usual complexity of the world is gone, hidden under a soft blanket of unbroken white. Only the nandina bush below the window shows a hint of green and red, a few berries peering out from their coating of snow.
The branches on the hickory and poplar trees are laden and sagging, each a thin strip of black wood topped by a long white caterpillar of snow. Lines, angles, intersections of light and shape; only the simplest of patterns survive. The contrast between the dark and light of the intertwining branches reminds me of an oriental painting, or something by Jackson Pollack in his later years. The snow both simplifies and enhances, turning the world into a silent and monochromatic place.
That is, until the redbird. It flits onto the nandina, dislodging the cap of snow, all bright motion, life, and color; a stark incongruity where before there had been only the drifting flakes from the sky. The red is so bright that it is almost painful, and yet it is impossible to look at anything else. It is an explosion that utterly disrupts the beautiful but predictable patterns of the scene.
I think about getting my camera to go out and take photos, but two things are stopping me: my bed is warm, and I don’t want to mar the perfect snow with footprints. Instead, I ponder the human mind’s proclivities toward whitespace and complexity, two tenets of design that are well represented in the natural scene before me. Perhaps it was in the snowy environs of our ice-age ancestors where the mind learned to equate beauty and whitespace. Whitespace meant safety, the lack of threat. Complexity meant danger, excitement, adventure.
The bird is joined by its mate, a female whose muted colors are a dull reflection of her male counterpart. Where he is aggressively crimson and shiny black, she is a comforting ocher and brown. Their movement creates more visual disturbance, changes in the patterns of color and light.
What does the redbird represent to my mind, and why is it so startlingly beautiful? Is it because the brain is hungry to see activity, contrast, potential opportunity? Is it the legacy of our caveman brain, watching for movement in the grass of the savanna?
Questions swirl as I watch the two birds. Why does the mind interpret the redbird as beautiful, as opposed to the mundane brown sparrows that also flitter around the nandina? Is it its relative rarity compared to the common sparrow? Is the mind more apt to be attracted to things that are out of the ordinary? If the world were full of redbirds, would the lowly sparrow be elevated to the status of beauty?
Wait, stop… What is it about us that we can’t simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and the redbird? What is it about our psyche that drives us to wonder ‘why’ it is beautiful? Why must we humans analyze everything, deconstruct everything, searching for root causes, and hidden foundational truths?
A distant noise, possibly a screen door slamming, and the pair of redbirds dart away. Their color and motion is gone, and everything returns to as it was. The scene, though, will never be as beautiful without them. They have ruined my appreciation of the snowscape. What was beautiful before their arrival is diminished by their departure. Such is life, that beauty is both defined and destroyed by its own fleeting nature.
I shake my head. The little miracle is over, and tomorrow even the snow will be gone. Time to get out of bed, make some coffee, and get to work.
Be First to Comment