Let me elaborate
There’s something interesting about the way children approach creativity. They don’t necessarily worry about rules, technique, or whether something is going to be considered sophisticated. They simply start creating. They experiment, draw, combine shapes, and discover things along the way.
Somewhere along the line, as adults, we sometimes lose that freedom. We become more analytical, more concerned with doing things correctly, and perhaps a little too conscious of what something is supposed to look like.
But I’ve always been fascinated by artists who can take something relatively simple and make it extraordinarily interesting.
I’ve had the opportunity to experience some remarkable exhibitions over the years. When I was in my twenties, I made trips to Los Angeles specifically to see major retrospectives of Andy Warhol and David Hockney. When I was 25, I traveled all the way to New York to see the Picasso and Matisse retrospective. I also visited the Museum of Modern Art, where I had the opportunity to see works by artists such as Van Gogh and experience other important pieces firsthand.
These weren’t just casual visits to museums. I made the trips because I wanted to see the work, understand it, and experience the paintings in person.
David Hockney particularly stayed with me.
I remember traveling to Los Angeles to see his retrospective, which eventually became part of the inspiration for a college paper I wrote about him. The paper was titled Walk Around Hotel Azatlan, the same title as the painting I was writing about.
What fascinated me about Hockney was his ability to move between sophisticated artistic ideas and work that sometimes appeared almost rudimentary, like something a child might create.
There were illustrations, chairs, shapes, and abstract compositions that seemed so simple on the surface. Yet when you looked closer, there was an extraordinary amount of thought, understanding, and artistic sophistication behind them.
I saw something similar in Picasso and Warhol, although each approached creativity in a very different way. They could challenge conventional ideas about what art was supposed to be, take familiar images or simple forms, and turn them into something unmistakably their own.
That’s what I find so interesting about these artists. They didn’t necessarily have to make everything complicated to make it meaningful.
Sometimes simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve.
I think about that when I’m working on my own paintings. You can spend hours experimenting with colors, shapes, composition, and different possibilities. You can understand the technical aspects of painting and know exactly why certain things work together.
But sometimes the best result comes from stepping back and removing things rather than adding more.
It’s almost like returning to that childlike approach to creativity. Not forgetting what you’ve learned, but allowing yourself the freedom to experiment without having to justify every decision.
There’s a difference between making something simple because you don’t know what else to do and making something simple because you understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish.
The latter can take years of experience.
In Conclusion
Perhaps that’s one of the most interesting things about becoming an artist. You spend so much time learning, experimenting, analyzing, and understanding the technical aspects of what you do, only to discover that sometimes the best approach is to return to the simplicity of where you started.
Child’s play doesn’t necessarily mean being childish. It means retaining that curiosity, that willingness to experiment, and that freedom to create without constantly questioning yourself.
Picasso, Warhol, and Hockney each demonstrated in their own ways that complexity doesn’t always have to look complicated.
Sometimes the simplest-looking things have the most thought behind them.
And maybe that’s the real trick: learning enough to understand the complexity, but never losing the ability to make it look simple.
After all, there’s something wonderful about approaching a new idea with the same curiosity you had when you first started creating.
Sometimes it’s just child’s play.
