Lots of people today, just want their art to match their furniture.

My aversion to matching things goes back to my childhood. Paintings to go with the chesterfield?

A ridiculous concept then, and now.

My sister and I would decorate the entire house; all of our constructions and pictures went up. Some of them, large, painted on burlap, hung unframed on the living room walls. One Christmas we decided to jazz things up a little by producing some coloured light. Carefully coating light bulbs with tempera, one blue, yellow, and red, we placed them in the tri-light. You can imagine our excitement and anticipation turning into disappointment in our first real lesson in the difference between color mixing and light.

We were always fortunate to have parents who kept us constantly supplied with art materials, who didn't mind messes, or if we borrowed a few things that we needed from them now and then. We played entire days on projects. We spattered paint of different colors through a screen onto paper below (achieving an incredible unity that Jackson Pollock would also do). We dipped kittens paws with the cats attached, in black paint and printed them. Andy Warhol's brother would do this as well, but I'm sure he didn't have the wonderful variety that we did (at one time our cats on the farm numbered fourteen).

A carefully coordinated, designer room, chills my heart. Shaking her head back and forth, a little grade seven girl responded to my question of "Do you have any of your pictures up in your house?... not in the kitchen?... not even in your bedroom? with......"Oh!... I'm not allowed to. It wouldn't go with the decorating!"

Then I recall the time my niece gave up her bedroom to her uncle and me at Christmas. Walking in, I was most surprised to see her walls covered in pictures, and little explanations on recipe cards underneath each one, in careful Grade three printing: I did this one, This one was done by my auntie, I did this one too, My Auntie did this one, Grandma gave me this...and so on. It did my heart good.



"How sad for a painter who loves blonds not to be able to put them in a painting because they don't harmonize with a basket of fruit. How horrible for a painter who hates apples to be forced to use them all the time because they go well with the carpet. I put whatever I please in my paintings." (238)
Picasso




238. Domenico Porzio and Marco Valsecchi, Understanding Picasso,(N.Y., Newsweek Books, 1973), p. 79