suggest something

Laura’s picture suggests. I looked at the picture a while before noticing the title. With all the hot weather here lately, it just seemed so appropriate for the way I feel while walking in the city. I get to dress comfortably, but seeing the office folks in their suits, skirts, ties, and laundered collars, my comfort seems unfair. I like the fireplace in this painting. It’s as if we can draw our own fireplace design around the orange bit…a fireplace from memory, perhaps a fireplace we’d like to have someday. Art that suggests things, music with spaces, paintings without detail, writing with sparse phrases, sculpture of familiar shapes, dance that seems incomplete…that suggestive aspect of art makes me think harder, pushes me to fill in spaces and complete things on my own. Despite the heat, this picture adds a whole new light to things, for me. It’s very basic: it suggests a place of fire, and the courage to sit near it, look into the flames, and wait for things to appear.

In Front of the Fire by Laura Tovar Dietrick