The Beauty of Growth

Medium: Watercolor on paper

Date: 1969

Beauty of Growth

Frank Stella, a leading artist, said, “I don’t know what these forms mean or where they come from.” So true for my featured artwork this week. When I painted this picture and looked at it, I said, “This looks to me like a potato!”

On our farm in Minnesota, we grew potatoes in our garden. We cut old potatoes into chunks. Each chunk possessed an eye. From each eye, we hoped to grow a root that would become a large new potato with many eyes. Our black earth was thick, muddy, yet crumbly. The roots grew tangled and moist in this rich, dense, peaty soil. Later, it took quite a bit of washing to clean those roots of the stubborn dirt clinging to our new potatoes!

When I created this piece, I wasn’t just painting a potato growing roots—I was exploring the raw, almost violent beauty of growth itself. The deep crimson background became a stage for something primal, something alive. The pale, sinewy forms twist and stretch as if caught in a moment of desperate expansion, while the black voids interrupt their movement, like pockets of resistance or uncertainty.

I made this image in 1969 after coming home from a day’s social work, staying with four children at the Bureau of Child Welfare. There were three boys, ages 5 to 8, and a very mature girl, age 10, who acted as their mother. She carried safety pins, needle, and thread, and watched over their food and behavior. They all asked me to become their father, and I truly wanted to. However, I was required to place them in several orphanages. I painted this picture when I came home that day. I do believe now that there is a connection between the growth of those endearing children and my own childhood and work in the fields. This has always been my favorite painting from that year and the only one I kept.

Symbolic Elements and Visual Design

The pale, root-like structures became more than just roots—they felt like veins, pathways, or even fragile limbs reaching for something unseen. In those twisting, stretching forms, I see reflections of the children I worked with—each one fragile yet resilient, reaching out in search of stability, connection, and care. The blue circular nodes, like the eyes of a potato, became symbols of hope and potential, tiny energy points anchoring these chaotic forms to something steady.

These shapes also remind me of my own childhood—of hands sunk into rich soil, of roots stubbornly pushing through the dense earth, seeking light and nourishment. Just as the roots in the painting grow despite resistance, those children and I grew through circumstances that often felt confining and uncertain. These forms, both fragile and powerful, are caught in a suspended moment of transformation—much like the lives of those children and the memories of my own youth.

Techniques

I leaned into bold outlines and flat, saturated colors. Every curve or sharp angle was deliberate. Each line carries tension and intent. The textured red background, with its subtle tonal shifts, is a universe in itself. It is a space where these root-like shapes have no choice but to push, stretch, and grow.

Emotional Impact

When I step back and look at this piece, I feel quiet chaos, suspended in time. There is a discomfort here—a sense of struggle—but also a strange beauty in how these forms cling to their space, refusing to let go. It speaks to the resilience we all carry in moments of uncertainty, the way growth often feels both necessary and impossibly hard.

Life Lesson

This painting reminds me that growth is rarely graceful. It is messy, awkward, and often painful. But it is also unstoppable. Roots do not ask permission—they push through whatever they must to reach what they need.

Although Paul Klee once said, “A line is a dot that went for a walk,” the lines in Beauty of Growth do not just walk—they dance, stumble, and claw their way forward. In that raw movement, I see a reflection of every moment I have had to grow, even when it felt impossible.