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I see myself as a general creative with no penchant for any particular discipline though I thirst for wisdom and guidance from masters of any art-form and this includes writing so I'm reading Startle and Illuminate - Carol Shields on Writing, edited by her daughter Anne Giardini and grandson Nicholas Giardini. This book was recommended to me by an editor who believes it to be rich in information for aspiring writers.

In this book, the author speaks about assigning the following to her classes: "Write a description of a room without using any adjectives". I've been pondering this and walking about observing everything around me and describing the things I see without using adjectives. To be sure I fully understood, I looked up the meaning of it and this is what I found: It's a noun and according to Merriam-Webster, it means, "... typically serving as a modifier of a noun to denote a quality of the thing named, to indicate its quantity or extent, or to specify a thing as distinct from something else."

If I wrote: A light streams through the gauze, inhaling, exhaling, moisture forming swelling to beads tracing a path revealing the pale. Does a picture form in your mind? Did I use any adjectives? 

I surmise writing a description without adjectives to be somewhat abstract where the reader is constructing her own imagery or understanding of the piece. I'm thinking this is similar to abstract painting. What is an adjective in painting? When I paint, am I giving away colour, texture, atmosphere, depth, line, representation? When I read a beautiful sentence resplendent in adjectives to describe a place, I am transported. Would my response to an adjectiveless description have the same effect, or would I delve deeper into some imagined version of it quite unlike the author's vision? I don't know. I'll be paying a lot more attention to this when I'm reading.

Applying this to abstract painting, I suspect if the artist has honed her skills, mastered her medium to a degree and is able to advance her knowledge by pushing the limits of what she already knows comfortably, she may be able to make an abstract work without using adjectives. The same would apply to anyone who dedicates any amount of effort and time, with or without experience, to make beautiful abstracts and in doing so is honing her skills and knowledge of her mediums. In my painting there could be a pretty woman (representational) or there could be a series of lines, dabs, colours arranged in a way maybe suggesting a pretty woman, or a not pretty woman, no woman or an arrangement of lines, dabs and colours that are interesting to you or not. If I read a sentence and don't understand, I will read it again to see if I can grasp a sense of what it can clarify for me. Does my mind wander? Does a memory pop into my head? Do I feel something and want to run away screaming? Do I feel like laughing? Do I love it and want to buy it and look at it everyday? When you look at an abstract painting, what do you see, feel, taste, smell, hear? If it doesn't please you, do you move on or take some time to be with it? Sometimes we sit through a movie we don't like because we paid to see it, or our best friend is loving it, or we finish the novel because we don't like to leave things unfinished. Whatever, we're all different. I'm curious about you, that's why I'm asking.

Next weekend I'm having an exhibition of my most recent works which are abstract. If you've read my previous email, you know these are a series of paintings done intuitively and have revealed a strong connection to nature. I'm not known for abstract painting, yet I'm very excited to share these with you as I want to know what you're experiencing when you view them. There's no right or wrong way to look at or feel about my work, so I'm inviting you to take some time to read these and I hope you'll share your findings with me without using any adjectives.