Several months ago I was offered the opportunity to be part of an on-line workshop and designed an exercise in support of its theme: silence. That workshop bended and swerved due to current events, eventually becoming something else entirely. That meant coming up with something new, but the original exercise stayed with me.

It involved the use of a viewfinder, a tool which has been used by artists forever, mainly to frame out areas they want to paint without being distracted by anything else in their field of vision. By using it on an already made, and quite chaotic, piece of artwork, I was able to "quiet" most of the painting and create several smaller images, each easier to look at, and appreciate, than the whole. (See if you can spot the first 5 images in the last image.)

But let’s not stop there...

While this method works remarkably well for art, I have found it works even better for life, especially in difficult situations. If you can find your focus you have a better chance of holding on to what is meaningful to you, no matter how much noise there is in the background. Sometimes less really is more.