Reject

It sounds as if many of the group are having the same kinds of problems with the "illumination" theme that I am having. My ideas rocket back and forth from literary and complex to stupidly simple. I decided last week I was thinking too hard and I needed to go simple and just start playing and see what developed. This is what developed.

I don't need to tell you, I'm sure, that it is a stylized sun, so it definitely fits the theme. But as I worked away on it I kept thinking how trite it seemed. So I offset it. Then I started hand-stitching on it. Of course nothing helped. It just looks like a sun that any 6th grade art student would come up with. It is cheerful and not awful, I guess, but without meaning or originality. I could make it even more trite and generic by putting a face on it!

So I started over. Perhaps the value of this false start was that along the way I went back to an idea I had earlier rejected and began to see the possibilities in it. I like it so much better. In fact I may even love it.

I might finish this sun and sew it on the side of a beach tote for my granddaughter. I think it would be just about right in that context.