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The late Chet Atkins says on a video of his that I watched this morning that "tension and release" was what music was all about for him.
This may not translate, if music theory isn't familiar. It was a reference to the interplay of resolved and unresolved chords or structure. Perhaps the easiest way to convey the idea is through the do-re-mi scale. If we go up the scale and stop "too soon" -- say, do re mi fa so la ti -- something in our western ear wants the resolution offered by the final "do." But in turn, that resolution is satisfying precisely because of what came before it -- in Chet Atkins' word, the tension. Some chord structures provide tension -- the suspended, the augmented, the seventh -- and our ear awaits the complementary resolution, perhaps a major triad. But all of one or the other is either cacophony or a sedative.
I think the best paintings and drawings have tension and release within them. Not all hard edges but not all soft, either. There is a statement, followed by some relief from it, then a restatement. "All middle values" is all "resolution," and is as visually exciting as three-chord country is to the ear. (Please don't write, cowboys, I'm one of you.) A collage of values in an extended range but without design is all "tension," or chaos. Intensity of hue without relief (resolution) is the kind of shouting that prevents anyone from being heard. Intensity married to subtlety, the yin and yang of it, perhaps, is what completes the image.
The key is tension and release. When a painting or drawing has both, the odds favor "retina burn."
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