By Maggie Conklin
Keep it Simple
For many years my mother Molly and I would spend one week each early October at a watercolor art workshop on Mackinac Island.
Our teacher was a wonderful German woman who wrote a book about her harrowing childhood in East Germany during WWII. It’s titled “Warchild – Word War II and its aftermath As Seen Through a Child’s Eyes” by Helga Flower, and it is quite the eye-opening read.
Every year she would have new art lessons for us to focus on, one for each of the five days we were paining. I was always amazed at how, year after year, she came up with new ideas. She also had a lot of sayings, and the most often repeated was “KISS; Keep it simple, stupid.”
I can easily imagine that, with her childhood, she would understand the luxury of keeping life simple.
With art and with food it is best to keep it simple. Yes, once in a while have a fancy meal with lots of sauces and flair, and once in a while enjoy some similarly extravagant artwork. But if we eat fancy food too often we get fat and have to take heartburn medicines, and if we look at extravagant artwork too often we get overwhelmed.
Dinner should be protein and one or two vegetables, like this lightly breaded pan-fried fish filet alongside simmered fresh carrots with butter, salt and thyme, and fresh spinach with a dab of salted butter. With a simple meal like this is it very unlikely anyone would get heartburn or indigestion, and yet it is plentiful and satisfying.
I urge you keep your food simple you’ll have better digestion; if you keep your art simple you’ll have a better appreciation; if you keep your life simple you’ll, well, you get the idea.
Enjoy!