I have discovered over the years that one of the things that turns me on most in my visual environment is accidental composition: the unplanned conjunction of elements into a grouping that has balance, energy and meaning. I find this in nature in abundance, but also in the works of man gathered together at random, or changed by alterations or decay over time. What results is composition which takes me beyond the familiar rules into new possibilities.
Historically, I find this same fascination in Impressionists like Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. With the aid of candid photography, which created arbitrary slices of the world, they revolutionized the way artists could think about composition in painting…
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