A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)
The Urge to Do Something can be powerful.
But good practitioners of any discipline are skilled at stripping away frivolity. The famous dictum, Occum’s Razor says something like, “Whatever doesn’t support, detracts” (that is not an exact translation, but it is an accurate translation). In Hebrew they say, “kol mosif gorea” which means “additions diminish”.
At the risk of violating the above principles I’ll tell you what brought this to mind. I just pulled a print. It’s the second state of a small plate that I took with me to a hillside not far from where I live. It’s located above the Sataf Spring just outside of Jerusalem. I drew out the landscape, the hills cascading one behind the other and the hungry sky above. I etched and printed it last week, but I felt it needed some atmosphere, some depth, so I did a few things (involving spray paint aquatint) and today I pulled the second state.
I don’t know exactly what to do right now. The decision is to Do Something or to consider it Done. It might actually be finished, but, and this is crucial, maybe it needs more. There is more that CAN be done, but I’m uncertain if there is more that SHOULD be done.
Meanwhile, I’m resisting the Urge.