Do what you must first, then what you’d like
36”x36” acrylic on canvas $—-
not available (private collection)

Divide this one at an angle from the top left to the bottom right, from the 11 toward the 5 on a clock face, and you’ll see that the two halves conform to a rough bilateral symmetry. Like a Rorschach inkblot or a face. This is right at the beginning of that type of phenomenon though, the transition from a radially symmetrical single celled organism to something with the suggestion of a front and back end. In fact, it looks a bit like somebody made a balloon animal of a diatom, shiny in the yellow light.

I heard something about a mid-twentieth century artist, I don’t remember specifics, who destroyed an abstract painting because someone told him that part of it looked like a rabbit, and after that he couldn’t unsee it. For my part, I’m a fan of pareidolia. Seeing patterns in unrelated things reminds me they aren’t really unrelated, that they are part, as are we all, of the one thing that is happening.