From Simplicity Arises Complexity—and From Complexity, Simplicity (2)
From Simplicity Arises Complexity—and From Complexity, Simplicity
In the studio, as in life, we often begin with something small. A gesture. A line. A color. A breath. It’s simple at first—almost too simple to notice. But if we follow it, if we let it lead, something begins to unfold. Shapes appear. Meaning gathers. A world takes form. Before long, we find ourselves surrounded by complexity—woven not from effort, but from attention.
That’s the nature of it. Simplicity gives rise to complexity.
But the cycle doesn’t end there.
If we keep going, keep making, keep trusting the process, something surprising happens: the complexity begins to resolve. Layers collapse into essence. Noise quiets into tone. What once felt tangled finds its center. The many becomes one again. We return to simplicity—but now it’s a deep simplicity, earned through experience. It holds everything. It needs nothing added.
Simplicity, in the beginning, can feel like naïve groping in the dark. There’s a raw innocence to it—a beginner’s hand reaching for something it can’t yet name. But if we stay with it, if we let that beginner’s mind stay alive even as our skills grow, something else emerges. Over time, that same simplicity becomes elegance. It becomes clarity shaped by the wisdom of mastery. What was once uncertain becomes intentional. What was once accidental becomes essential. This is the long arc of practice.
This movement—from simplicity to complexity and back again—is the natural rhythm of creation. It’s how rivers form canyons. How a child learns language. How a painting grows from blankness and returns to silence.
As artists, we don’t have to force this. In fact, we can’t. Our job is to pay attention. To know when to let something build and when to let it go. To know when we’re adding out of curiosity and when we’re adding out of fear.
Sometimes, the most courageous thing is to stop. To not overwork it. To trust that the essential has already been said.
Simplicity isn’t the absence of depth—it’s the distillation of it. It’s what remains after complexity has run its course.
So if you find yourself overwhelmed in your work, step back. Look for the pulse beneath the noise. Ask yourself what wants to stay, and what can be released. Let your art breathe. Let it return to the simplicity it came from.
From Simplicity Arises Complexity and from Complexity, Simplicity.
I came up with a saying years ago: “From simplicity arises complexity and from complexity, simplicity.” For fun I thought it would be interesting to use this saying as a prompt in ChatGPT and ask it to write something using this saying as if Yoda the Jedi Master was explaining it.
Yodaese, it becomes you. You can’t have a play without the stage set. One with the audience you are until you see the complexity of the story. Choose you can to become part of the performance or just the observer of the production. Either way, you participate in the whole enchilada experience either by eating it or being a necessary ingredient. Perhaps during your return to simplicity you have quelled your hunger, or been inspired to make a better enchilada.
Well stated, Cecil. Sometimes with me a title comes to me when I only have a very few items in front of me and then it can flow from that. Other times a piece becomes itself as it's supposed to but a title is something that escapes me, sometimes for many days. I'm trying too hard to find the name of a piece but if I let it go, eventually, something comes to me in my sleep or when I'm doing whatever. And sometimes, the complexity comes from me wanting to add too many elements or the engineering of putting it all together can be very complex. But again........eventually, when I don't try too hard and not feeling frustrated, answers come as if they are a gift from somewhere.