Here’s a painting that Harold Bauer brought to my painting class, where the drift is towards abstraction with a landscape-y feeling. He made this painting in another class with another instructor and from a seated figure. It’s a real stretch to see a figure in this, isn’t it! But if you rotate the painting you discover that you project different expectations into the different versions. Perhaps a light bulb in one of them? Perhaps you prefer one of the left-right flips because you prefer the movement in one of them over the other. When you get 
back to the original orientation, you may sigh with relief in the recognition that this does suggest a figure after all. It’s a disturbing figure, to be sure, but your mind drifts towards that expectation. Doesn’t it? The mind desperately wants to recognize something and will willingly accept all sorts of weirdness to find some satisfaction.
This painting may or not be finished. I present this rotation game here to show how we grapple with the mysteries of composition in my painting class.
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artamaze by Katherine Hilden 