This past week, my sister visited me in Phoenix for a few days, and one afternoon, we ventured to the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. In addition to learning all about the cacti and succulents I’ve been admiring these past three weeks, there was also a surprise: an art exhibit of Fernando Botero’s work.
If you don’t recognize Fernando Botero by name, chances are you would recognize his singular artistic style, which depicts people, animals, and objects in sensuous, rounded, volumetric form. He has sculptures in public places and paintings in museums all over the globe. I recognized some of his paintings and immediately recalled his sculptures in the Time Warner Building in Columbus Circle of New York City, depicting a voluminous nude man and woman standing side by side.
As part of the exhibit, a small theater played a documentary about Botero’s life on repeat. We sat down, thinking we’d only watch for a little while, and were immediately enthralled by his life story, staying for the entire film. And while there are many aspects of his life or quotes from the movie that easily could have inspired a blog post, what stood out to me most the following day was something he said about style. When asked why he always paints in a similar style or doesn’t vary his style, he replied (I’m paraphrasing from memory), “I could paint in many other styles, but I’m drawn to paint in this style. Why have 50 styles? It’s OK to have just one.”
As a musician and songwriter, this spoke to me deeply. It can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling I should be able to write songs in a wide or even endless variety of styles and tempos. Because versatility is impressive, right? And more is always better, right?
Not necessarily, and definitely not according to Mr. Botero. His words of wisdom give us permission to create what we are drawn to create as opposed to adhering to some unrealistic external expectation of variety.
If we have one style, and we are drawn to create in that one style, that is just fine. What a relief <3
Photo by Alain Benainous
