Looking Again

I was recently commissioned to make a painting.

I don't actively seek out commissions or really try to sell my paintings. But every once in a while someone asks me to make something, and I'm usually happy to do it.

My relationship with painting has always been a little inconsistent.

Outside of graduate school, I've never had the kind of studio practice where I paint a few hours every day or even every week. Instead, it tends to happen in fits and starts.

I'll go months without painting. Then something happens and I get completely absorbed.

I paint constantly. I think about painting when I'm not painting. I get incredibly focused and produce a lot of work in a relatively short period of time.

And then, at some point, I stop.

Usually I don't even decide to. Something else catches my attention. Another project takes over. And one day I realize I haven't been in the studio for a while.

The commission pulled me back in.

In a small studio at my Lakeview space, there are three paintings that I started together about two years ago. They've been sitting there unfinished ever since.

Once I started working on the commission, I found myself looking at them again.

Something was different.

At first I thought maybe my ideas about painting had changed.

But the longer I looked, the more I realized that wasn't quite it.

My eye had changed.

Or maybe more accurately, I had changed the way I was using it.

When I first started looking at the paintings again, there was a surprising amount of noise.

Not actual noise.

Thought.

I was looking at the paintings, but at the same time there was all this commentary about painting happening in my head.

What makes a painting work.

What makes a painting interesting.

What should stay.

What should change.

What a good painting is supposed to do.

I don't even remember having these ideas two years ago. I couldn't tell you exactly where they came from.

But there they were.

And for a while, I wasn't really seeing the paintings at all.

I was seeing my thoughts about them.

So I tried something that has become very familiar to me in another part of my life.

I stopped.

I stepped back.

I took a breath.

And I tried to look at what was actually there.

Without deciding whether it was good.

Without deciding what it needed.

Just looking.

Eventually I started to notice something.

The paintings had structure, but the structure felt too strong.

There was something almost overly resolved about them.

It reminded me of listening to a musician who is so focused on playing their instrument perfectly that somehow the music disappears.

Every note can be pristine. Everything can be exactly where it belongs.

And yet something is missing.

It's one of the reasons I love live jazz.

You can hear decisions being made.

You can hear people listening to one another.

Someone takes an idea somewhere unexpected. Someone else responds. Something changes because of what just happened.

There is structure, but there is also life.

And looking at these paintings, I realized that was what I was missing.

Once I stopped trying to decide what a painting was supposed to be, I could respond to the ones that were actually in front of me.

I didn't suddenly want to erase everything I'd done two years ago. I could see what was working. I could also see where the structure was holding things too tightly.

And I knew where I wanted to go next.

I've spent a lot of the past few years thinking about listening.

When I'm improvising during a sound bath, I'm listening constantly.

The question isn't usually, What should I play next?

It's closer to, What just happened?

A gong opens into a sound I wasn't expecting.

Two bowls interact and create something between them.

A tone hangs in the room longer than I thought it would.

Something becomes unsettled.

Something settles.

And I notice my response.

Sometimes there is an immediate impulse to do something.

Add another sound.

Resolve something.

Move somewhere else.

But I've learned that having an impulse doesn't mean I need to follow it.

I can notice it.

I can sit with it.

I can listen a little longer.

And then I can respond.

Painting has started to feel like that.

When I'm deeply involved in it, I'm not thinking about much else.

I'm watching paint go onto the canvas.

I'm watching colors interact.

I'm watching them change as they dry.

I step back.

I look.

Something in me wants to make a move.

Sometimes I make it.

Sometimes I wait.

Sometimes I realize the thing I was certain needed to happen doesn't need to happen at all.

What surprised me was how familiar this felt.

I have spent years practicing this kind of attention through sound without realizing that the practice had very little to do with sound.

And apparently attention isn't medium-specific.

Standing in front of those unfinished paintings, I could hear all the ideas I had about what a painting should be.

I didn't need to make them quiet.

I just needed to recognize that they weren't the painting.

Then I could look again.