Monday, September 16, 2019

The Latin Root "Cise"

Over the course of a few days, my work in progress made it clear that we were moving from wildflower field

wildflower field

to salt marsh—

salt marsh

—a work-in-progress salt marsh that was asking me to make decisions.

The Latin of the word decision literally means to cut off. Making a decision is about cutting off choices; it is to cut yourself off from some other course of action than the one you choose to make.

Even more literally, in this case, I understood that it might mean cutting this work in progress in half, thereby cutting myself off from developing it in its 18 x 24" size and, instead, developing two 12 x 18" pieces.

I began to entertain the possibility.




4 comments:

carol edan said...

Love your cuts and your process. Thanks for vocabulary lesson. Always love to increase my word power!Decision, cut out and and then focus.... something I really have to learn, in my art and life!

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Carol, thanks! Decisions, decisions—not straightforward for me here. To cut would open the door to compositional conundrums …

Lola (Jen Jovan) said...

You are the queen of cutting! I love where this is going...

dotty seiter: now playing said...

Don't know when I became a cutter, but there's no denying it! Thanks for your vote of confidence regarding the direction this WIP is taking.

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