In Praise of Mistakes and Piet Mondrian

I welcome mistakes in my work because I often find that mistakes force me to find creative solutions that result in designs much better than I originally envision. With the piece below, I had originally glued it up in the wrong order. After recutting and reglueing it the lines between the old and new cherry pieces was too visible so I inlaid the black opaque epoxy over it. The result is something that reminds me of Piet Mondrian's work. I had been thinking that it would be interesting to do a Piet Mondrianesque piece but wasn't planning on doing it in the immediate future - but then it just showed up anyway. Not that I'm a fan of his art, I just think it would look better if it were done in wood. My distaste for his paintings derive from seeing his retrospective at the Smithsonian. I thought his early work was interesting but then it looked like he slowly went insane and he was trying to draw the view down with him. Oh the monotony! They just got bigger and bigger, painting after painting, room after room, the same thing over and over. By the end, I couldn't look any more. Definitely a Mondrian overload. If only he had worked in wood he might have been able to continue making something interesting.