I headed down to the Stanford Bookshop and figured that I would browse some pages and probably purchase a book that I could read during the afternoon. However, upon entering the bookstore, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was not the noise of an environment that initially grabbed my attention, but rather the details that seemed to beckon to me. There was a painting of a map of the area in which the shop was located, along with the street names painted in blue swirls, as well as small illustrations in each corner of the map that were probably significant memories for the painter.
Then, I looked up.
Everything was painted in colors. In the center of everything, there was a hummingbird flying in mid-air, with its wings extended in an eternal pause. Surrounding it were flowers that were painted to be larger than life, with an inscription in the middle stating “Love grows here.”
It wasn’t the kind of decoration where it felt like an extra effort put into making an empty wall look prettier. Instead, it looked like the wall needed to house something alive, vibrant, and colorful. To me, it seemed as if the artist was daring and bold enough to use colors without any second thoughts or hesitations because of the conviction that it would bring something great out of it.
Furthermore, the artist continued creating his masterpiece adjacent to it by using various colors that formed a rainbow and giant-sized petals that covered almost half of the building. What amazed me even more about the painting was the way it was done. It looked like a child’s painting, but the difference is that it was big and bold while paying no attention to proportions. However, it did not stop the creator from expressing his feelings and emotions through art.
I later entered the library and spent some time browsing through the available books. Nonetheless, my thoughts remained preoccupied with the idea of how an artist may begin his creative process with observation and then move on to expression by giving up the idea of achieving accurate results.