Planting Artistic Renewal and Rebirth
To see this essay in its original format please follow this link: https://conta.cc/3zmCzI8
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.
Are you aware that April is the official month of hope? With all of the fear chaos, and overwhelm in our outer world there has never been a better time to lean on hope. Wikipedia describes hope as an optimistic state of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes for ourselves and/or the world at large. Now is the perfect time to plant a garden for your wishes, dreams, intentions, and plans to grow.
Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth. Just as flowers grow in fertile soil, so will you. Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity expresses hope through works of art. An artist brings something into existence that wasn’t there before. To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention - opening yourself up as a conduit for new creation.
Is a new and exciting vision calling you? Can you become still enough to feel it in your heart? Have you noticed your old self feeling constricted and uncomfortable? Could there be a genuine sense of hope rising within you?
Please join me in preparing a garden for artistic growth.
Clearing
The first step in preparing any garden is clearing away the old growth that no longer serves. At some point the very things that excited and expanded us in the past start to feel stale and constricting. When a style or subject becomes popular and provides a comfortable lifestyle an artist can become trapped inside their own success. The known is safe and familiar, and it pleases others but it leaves us dull and lifeless.
When you stay in the known rather than stepping into the unknown there is a different sort of pain. The problem with refusing growth is the pain of living a life of unlived dreams. There is an almost itchy feeling that you were meant for more than "this".
One way you can recognize overgrowth in your creative garden is you repeat yourself. Fight the urge to repeat what works and sells and instead take risks, experiment, and evolve as an artist.
There is magic in not knowing, the mystery. If you follow your strategic mind, replicating what you already know, you will miss out on this wonderful feeling of being fully alive.
Artists lead an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life. Continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine and challenging art, in and of itself. Aliveness waits for us precariously balanced out on our green growing edge asking us to bring forth new ideas and share them with the world.
You will know it is time to clear the field when your own inner artist begins calling out for you to change. Your next move is already sitting beside you, waiting. It awaits your next step, your attention, and your curiosity. Do you see it? Do you hear it? Do you notice it? It may be a small, quiet voice whispering in your ear, it may be an image that suddenly appears in your painting, or the character who emerges unbidden in your writing.
Inspiration - Preparing the Soil
The most exciting moments for an artist are those when a new idea arrives fully formed and ready for our action.
Elizabeth Gilbert describes inspiration this way, “Both the Greeks and the Romans believed in the idea of an external spirit of creativity—a sort of house elf, who lives within the walls of your home and sometimes aids you in your labors. The Romans had a specific term for that helpful house entity. They called it your genius—your guardian deity, the conduit of your inspiration. This is to say, the Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius. It’s a subtle but important distinction (being vs. having)” Gilbert also says, “I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.”
Imagine what’s possible for you if that is true! An incredible idea is seeking you as a partner to manifest itself. To pick up this energy we do not look for, predict or analyze our way in. Instead, create an open space that allows it in - a space so free of the overpacked condition of our minds that it functions like a vacuum. This is what I mean by preparing the soil to plant seeds. We prepare ourselves to receive this ceaseless generative energy by getting still enough to tune in to it.
My best ideas come when I am doing something relaxing and enjoyable. Ideas for art arrive like visitors while my hands are immersed in warm water washing dishes and gazing out my kitchen window, some drop in during meditation, or come and sit with me when I am drinking my morning coffee in a patch of sunshine. Pinterest, museum visits, travel, and reading are other ways I fill my creativity tank. What works best for you? Does inspiration come to you when you are out in nature, in the shower, falling asleep, or driving your car?
Inspiration is always trying to work through us. The feeling is the affirmation we are on the right path. The ecstatic is our compass - pointing to our true north. As artists, it is our job to collect this inspiration, transmute it, and share it. We are translators for messages the universe is broadcasting. We co-create with universal energy as we filter these downloads through our individual personalities and taste.
Notice how new ideas seem to arrive in waves sprinkled around the globe when their time has come. If you tune into this evolution of thought, a crazy idea that's bothering you might serendipitously connect you to an expanding and inspiring art movement.
This video planted a new seed for me. (https://youtu.be/lbaemWIljeQ)
Yes, it is important to lead, but what if we only need to tune into and amplify someone else's evolutionary idea
Gathering Seeds
A seed can be a phrase, a color, a feeling, a need, an idea, a momentary perception, an unexpected thought, or the echo of a memory. Hints of inspiration can be the tiniest whispers, Two seeds of inspiration might seem indistinguishable but one may yield volumes and the other little to nothing. Seeds are potential starting points that, with love and care, can grow into something beautiful.
Elizabeth Gilbert describes how inspiration keeps, “trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something new and surprising, through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long . . . whatever works. Inspiration is always trying to work with me.”
The more seeds you have the easier it is to choose one of them to focus on. If you’ve collected 100 seeds you might find that seed number thirty-five speaks to you in a way that none of the others do. If thirty-five is your only choice without the other seeds for context it’s more difficult to tell. Placing too much emphasis on a single seed or dismissing it prematurely can interfere with its natural growth. Collect many seeds and then, over time, look back to see which ones resonate. Each one should be approached with active awareness and boundless curiosity.
Where do you store your seeds? I have collected seeds from the past thirty years in a three-ring binder. In it, I have sketches, photos, notes, and detailed instructions for myself. I have more seeds on my Pinterest boards, in folders on my phone and computer, and pinned to my bulletin board in my studio. These seeds hold enough energy to get me going whenever I am searching for a new direction. I like to post images of art styles I would like to learn in a place I see them daily for further inspiration.
I find that if I leave my seeds for too long they lose energy and vigor. Something that lit me up a few months ago, is easily eclipsed by the next shiny object. And by delaying it’s not uncommon for my idea to find its voice through another maker. Someone told me that even Michael Jackson was terrified his muse would take his inspiration to Prince if he did not act on it immediately.
Talent is the ability to let ideas manifest through you. Technique and skill allow us a greater range of responses but on their own, they will not allow the seed to reach its full expression. Our work as artists is to collect seeds, plant them, water them with attention, and see if they take root.
Sometimes a small and seemingly insignificant seed will grow into a magnificent tree. Having a specific vision of what a seed will become is helpful in later phases, but it may cut off more interesting possibilities in this initial phase.
Nurturing Growth
Each action you take in a dynamic and evolving environment like a garden changes not only your perspective but also the environment itself. Both are deeply interdependent. Your actions create alternative possibilities for your seed that did not exist before.
Every brushstroke, every decision in your art, creates a set of possible paths that were not only invisible before but didn’t exist before you made that creative move. Each branch that sprouts generates possible new branches. Demanding full control of a work of art is just as foolish as demanding that an oak tree grows according to your will.
The only way to truly know if an idea works is to test it. Ask yourself as many “what if” questions as you can. Should the whole painting be purple? What if you used only two colors? What if you combined your idea with another seed? Each unsuccessful solution gets you closer to one that works. Give yourself permission to play with your seeds. Do not make them too precious.
When a plant is flourishing, we can see the life spring forth from every stalk, leaf, and flower. Our emotions tell us when an idea is flourishing. When something interesting starts to come together, it arouses delight and a feeling of wanting more.
As your vision grows the work reveals itself to you. Allow it all the time it needs to bear fruit. Elizabeth Gilbert advises, “Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the capacity to transform you. Don’t let go of your courage the moment things stop being easy or rewarding. Because that moment? That’s the moment when interesting begins.”
All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your abilities, here and now.
Pruning, editing, trimming
Once you have a seed flourishing and bearing fruit you may find a direction that will support your growth for a week, a year, or a lifetime. A single seed can provide all you need to produce a series of deep and interesting artworks. Or, one of your seeds will grow and flourish to the point where it begins to take over the entire garden and block the sun from your other projects.
That’s when pruning, editing, and trimming can redirect you back to what’s essential and what feels joyful and fulfilling. Just as quickly your seed can lose vigor and wilt. If you lack a certain skill or expertise to bring your idea to fruition, set it aside until you attain the skills you need or invite collaboration and guidance from someone with the missing expertise. The beautiful thing about seeds is their patience.
Anyone can take the simple and make it complicated but it takes mastery to reduce a complicated idea to its essence - elegantly right and simple. The point of trimming and pruning is to encourage more vigorous healthy growth. Follow the feeling of joy when deciding between what needs to stay and what needs to go.
Watch for the urge to over-prune or kill a growing idea that scares you. A weed is just a plant growing where you didn't invite it to grow.
Newness always feels awkward and uncomfortable to you the artist and the people around you. Pursuing something new and different will invite criticism and comparison from others. You are not here to create the final statement in art after which no more comments are possible.
Each work you create is a milestone along your lifelong journey, a chapter about where, when, and what you were thinking when you created it.
If you can get your art to the point where when you see it you know it could not have been any other way - when it is balanced and elegant and simply stated - then you can truly enjoy the fruits of your labors.
Harvest/Gather Fruit:
Just as in gardening artistic growth is a seasonal process with periods of rest, hidden growth when everything happens underground, struggle, flourishing, hard work, harvest, and then clearing and starting over. At the end of a productive season rest and restoration are required before starting the process of clearing space for new seeds all over again.
Like gardening, creativity is more about the process than the product.
Our goal as artists is to live a fulfilling and productive life of making art. To be like my mango tree that effortlessly produces abundant beauty year after year. If you follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions they will bring you to life. Be the blooming garden, the fruiting tree, and create whatever it is that fills your heart with joy.
Creative living is always possible whatever form your expression takes.
Comparing yourself and relying on approval from others takes you further away from yourself. Who you are isn’t contingent upon anyone else’s opinion. You decide who you are. You are the author, artist, and composer of your life. It's an inside job. You give your power away when you look outside yourself for validation.
Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
Making and sharing art is our legacy as artists. Each work we create says to the world "I was here". It connects us with others in a language beyond words. Each work is an affirmation of our time and our experience, it is a calling to the rest of the world to join in the play and light their own creative spark. It doesn't need to be any more than that for us to have pride in our artistic expression.
Here are the books I used as resources for this essay. I found them fascinating and you might too. I especially enjoyed Rick Rubin's book "The Creative Act". I highly recommend it.
Rick Rubin - The Creative Act
Suzanne Hanna - The Wilderness Walk Oracle Guidebook
Nancy Hillis M.D. - The Adjacent Possible
Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic; Creative Living Beyond Fear
Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, abundant, and joyful because it's exceedingly likely that you will be the only one to even notice. If you would like my guidance and advice in preparing your artistic garden for more expansive growth I am happy to share my insights and my knowledge with you.
Please reach out to me if you would like my collaboration in nurturing your artistic seeds. I welcome the opportunity for conversation, collaboration, and commissions.
With Light and Delight
Susan
10 Cues for Creating the Illusion of 3 Dimensional Space on a 2 Dimensional Surface
To view this essay in its original form follow this link: https://conta.cc/3Nf2sSo
All Art is an Illusion
Creating a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface is a form of magic. An artist starts with a two-dimensional surface; it may be a wall, a canvas, a board, paper, or a pavement. Using paint or other media an illusion is created that invites the viewer into the universe of the picture and the tensions that reside within it.
In art, the term “space” is used to refer both to depth—real or represented—and to the general surface area within a work of art. Contrasts of color, volume, line, and texture activate expanding and contracting forces designed to breathe and pulsate, interact, and struggle within the space of your picture world, just as we interact and struggle within our own universe.
Whether your work is representational or abstract your picture contains a world of contrasts; a sense of movement through several planes, a flux between positive and negative visual energies, and the jostling between forms for frontality.
Our brain and eyes use depth cues to describe things as being in front, behind, above, below, or to the side of other things. The ability to perceive relationships in three-dimensional space is necessary for movement and the orientation of our body in relation to the objects around us. Navigating from one point to another depends on the ability to perceive depth, and even reaching out a hand to pick up a paintbrush, relies on depth perception.
Imagine you're driving in a car and you see a castle far off in the distance.
How is it that the castle begins to look bigger as you drive closer? The castle obviously isn't growing while you drive, so what is causing this?
Notice when you drive on a long flat road like Alligator Alley, the road appears to get smaller and smaller before disappearing entirely over the horizon. The road doesn’t change in size so why does it look that way?
When you drive through mountains do they appear blue and hazy in the distance and then become green and sharply focused as you approach them?
These illusions are all cues used by our brains to calculate distance and depth.
During the Italian Renaissance (c. 1400-1600) artists worked very deliberately to understand and create convincing illusions of three-dimensional space in two-dimensional media. These artists dedicated themselves to combining as many depth cues as possible into a system known as linear perspective.
Linear perspective refers to the fact that we perceive depth when we see two parallel lines that seem to converge into a “vanishing point” on the horizon. The other depth cues they used are the overlap of objects, the relative size and closeness of images to the horizon, and variation in color, value, light, and shadow caused by distance.
The first known picture to make use of linear perspective was created by the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). Painted in 1415, it depicted the Baptistery in Florence from the front gate of the unfinished cathedral. The linear perspective system projected the illusion of depth onto a two-dimensional plane by use of ‘vanishing points’ to which all lines converged, at eye level, on the horizon. Soon after Brunelleschi’s painting, the concept caught on, and many Italian artists started to use linear perspective in their paintings.
Look how Raphael creates an illusion of three-dimensional form in La Donna Velata. Through careful variations in value, particularly shading — using darker colors to create the illusion of shadows — Raphael convinces us that the woman in the painting is really there in three dimensions.
Light strikes her from her left, casting her right side in shadow. The folds of her voluminous sleeve are a particularly splendid example of the illusion of space. Even examining a small detail of it, it is hard to believe that there is no depth, at all, just thin layers of paint on a flat canvas.
In his 1474 portrait of Ginevra de’Benci, Leonardo da Vinci painted a narrow band of blue trees and a blue horizon at the back, behind the brownish trees that frame the pale stern woman whose bodice laced up with the same blue. He loved atmospheric effects and wrote that when painting buildings, “to make one appear more distant than another, you should represent the air as rather dense. Therefore make the first building…of its own color; the next most distant make less outlined and more blue; that which you wish to show at yet another distance, make bluer yet again; and that which is five times more distant make five times more blue.”
Coordinating depth cues correctly is critical for creating a familiar world on your paper or canvas for the viewer to enter and feel at home.
When you work abstractly distorting these cues or applying only a few of them is one of the ways an artist can create tension and interest in the work.
Look at these works by Mark Rothko. Notice how he uses color saturation and edge quality to create the illusion of space in this painting. The longer you gaze at this artwork the shapes seem to shift and change color and details will suddenly appear that you may not have noticed at first. Do some of these shapes appear solid, while others seem to be like veils hiding other layers from view? How deep would you say the space is in this painting? One foot? Six inches? Three feet? Rothko’s work is very subtle but the cues he uses to place one thing in front of another are the same ones used by realist landscape painters.
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was one of the most important figures of postwar American art and is considered one of the greatest twentieth-century teachers. Hofmann played a pivotal role in the development of Abstract Expressionism (1940 to present).
He believed that modern art must remain faithful to the flatness of the canvas support and he devised the term “push and pull” to describe the dynamic relationship between flatness and depth in an abstract painting or drawing.
Push and pull “are expanding and contracting forces activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes (a plane is a flat shape contained within a line) are the most important carriers, lines and points less so.” Hofmann felt Cézanne exemplified this concept. “At the end of his life and the height of his capacity, Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull.
Hans Hoffman’s “push and pull” teaching is based on the same cues and concepts used by Renaissance artists and the same ten cues I present to you today.
These ten cues are the same ones our brain uses to determine our location in space and the approach of a speeding car or tennis ball. When applied together or separately in our paintings as contrasts of line, form, color, and texture a sense of dynamic depth, dimensionality and movement are created.
Overlap - Objects in the front cover and hide objects behind
Shading - describes how light falls on a three-dimensional form using darker colors to create the illusion of shadow.
Relative Size - Smaller is farther away, Larger is closer
Shadows - Objects create a hole in the light. The hole describes the shape of the object in a shadow that falls on anything behind it.
Value/ Focus - Further away blends into the background (loses color & value)
Placement - higher is farther away
Perspective - parallel lines come together at a vanishing point on the horizon; the closer together the two lines are, the farther away they seem.
Temperature - warm advances, cool recedes
Edges - sharp advances, blurry recedes
Saturation - bright advances, dull recedes
Imagine that you would like to paint a pond full of water lilies.
Each lily pad should get smaller and higher up as it goes back toward the horizon. Each one will lose color and detail as it gets farther away. Whether the lily pads get darker or lighter will depend on the light in the background. If the background is darker the small ones will begin darkening to blend with the background as they get farther away. If the background is light then they will get lighter as they near the horizon.
Making sure all of your cues agree will improve the illusion.
Maybe you want to paint boats in a harbor. Each boat should get smaller and higher up as it goes back into space. Whether you'd like to paint a field of poppies, sunflowers, or a vase of flowers these cues will help you add interest, realism, and depth. You can vary some of your flowers so they get smaller and higher up as they move into the background. Others can get cooler, and less defined as they become more distant. Flowers in the foreground can become warmer and more detailed. Cast shadows will add even more depth.
Whether you are painting a realistic scene or an abstraction of one you can use warm colors to make your shapes appear larger and cool colors to make them appear smaller. You can blur and sharpen edges to make them advance and recede within the space. When finishing a painting I often warm up my foreground with gold paint and cool the back with blue or purple to make my foreground more dimensional.
Common spatial errors are “kissing” and relative size. Kissing objects touch instead of overlapping each other or the horizon. Kissing will flatten your space, so you may want to invent an overlap even if wasn’t in your resource image.
Architects commonly add people to their drawings to demonstrate the scale of their designs. A familiar object allows the viewer to compare the relationship between one object and another. If you have a single object, like a house, a boat, or a person on a street or in a crowd, that repeats as it goes back in space, make sure that the size gets smaller in a logical way, so you don’t have one giant person in the midst of your crowd.
Unless you are trying to add tension and danger, check to make sure all your cues agree and your shadows are all going in the same direction.
My early work is filled with examples of conflicting spatial cues. It took me years of study to internalize these cues and there is still room for improvement. These works below are mine from 2016 and they could use more depth for me to be satisfied with them. These are pieces I set aside to finish when I acquire the knowledge I was missing when I started them.
When you look at the images below can you observe some of the cues giving conflicting information about the space? Can you list the cues being used in these paintings? What do you see that could be improved to make the space more believable?
The use of perspective to create a convincing illusion of depth does not make Da Vinci or Raphael a “better” artist than Rothko or Cezanne, nor does it make their works any “better” or more sophisticated.
Assigning value between abstraction and representation, or between gestural, expressionistic styles and geometric forms is not useful in judging whether a painting is successful. The universal goal of every style of art is visual unity, and form that stimulates interest in the viewer, whether pleasing to the eye or not.
The illusion of depth is one of the many tools in the artist’s toolbox. It is a useful technique for creating a heightened emotional effect and drawing us, the viewers, into the composition, as if we are in the scene. The process of creating a believable three-dimensional illusion on a two-dimensional surface is a work of magic because we are creating an idea in the mind of our viewer, not an actual 3-dimensional form.
Our struggle and interaction to create this illusion within the universe of the picture is a mirror of our interaction and struggle with the truth of our outer universe. Attempting to translate the conceptual world of the imagination into a believable physical universe of three dimensions is a worthy effort that can raise our work to a level of mastery few artists attain.
This month I used the following books and articles as resources:
Rebecca Solnit - The Faraway Nearby
If you would like my guidance and advice in adding more depth and dynamism to your paintings I am happy to share my insights and my knowledge with you. I welcome the opportunity for conversation, cooperation, collaboration, and commissions.
With Light and Delight
Susan
“One looks, looks long, and the world comes in”
- Joseph Campbell
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When you stand before a painting in an art gallery or museum what goes through your mind? Do you start examining the wall label hoping to make sense of the image before you? Do you follow a guide or a recorded tour in hopes of understanding what you are supposed to see or understand? Do you judge the painting on its likeability? Do you walk past everything you don’t recognize already?
Did you know that the average museum visitor spends seventeen seconds viewing each work of art? Throngs of people line up inside the Louvre to snap cell phone photos of the Mona Lisa who smiles blissfully unperturbed behind bulletproof glass at the crowds as they briefly glance her way. Of Da Vinci’s seven known paintings three hang inside the Louvre. Two incredibly beautiful Da Vinci artworks hang in relative repose just steps away from the Mona Lisa ignored by the hordes.
The Mona Lisa seen through a camera lens is not the same as a close, careful observation of the work itself. Each artwork you see hanging on a museum or gallery wall is the result of hundreds of choices and decisions, the moves the artist made and did not make when faced with the blank canvas. Whatever its subject, whatever its style, the artist spent many, many hours gazing at this image and preparing it to meet you.
Every work of art gives concrete expression to a whole series of perceptions and memories that belong to both the artist and the viewer. The work may be new to us but it never stands alone. To give that canvas our attention is to give ourselves an opportunity to discover the power and relevance of our own perception.
What you see first, what you interpret from the relationships of shape, color, and character will be different from every other person who stands before it. Through detached noticing, awareness allows the observed object to reveal more of itself without our intervention. Learning to pay close attention to a work of art has the potential to change not only the way you visit a museum or a gallery but also the way you live your life.
Goethe says “The hardest thing to see is that which is before our eyes”. Seeing clearly is no easy trick.
What stands between us and seeing clearly are distractions, mindsets (distortions, received ideas, prejudices, and preconceptions), and mental fabrications our mind makes up for us.
Most of us go through our lives without really looking at what is there, around us. Instead, we choose to see through the smoked glass of ignorance, presumption, or delusion. We end up being fooled by what we imagine we see rather than what is really there.
Humans are bombarded with stimuli, both externally in the form of sights, sounds, and other sensory information and internally in the form of thoughts, emotions, and memories. Our brain automatically filters our surroundings and our internal state and allows only a small percentage of available information to pass through to protect us from an information overload that would otherwise paralyze us.
What this means is that we don’t “see with our eyes” we see with our brain. Visual processing begins in the retina, a part of the eye that is also a part of the brain. What we see engages a full 25% of our brain and over 65% of all our brain pathways - more than any of our other senses.
By throttling down to the minimum amount of information in our chaotic world we are able to carry on conversations in crowded restaurants or drive a car while helping our children recite their multiplication facts, or play a sport in front of a screaming crowd. We grow accustomed to the brain’s fast, general interpretations and categorizations of our surroundings even when doing so means we focus on some things at the expense of others.
The power of observation can be developed by simply opening our eyes, turning on our brains, tuning in, and paying attention. In life, the scene in front of us constantly changes and re-organizes itself. Four people at an accident scene often report markedly different versions of the same event. The unchanging nature of a painting allows those four viewers to discuss, review and reach an agreement on their experience.
Looking at art can be mind-opening in ways you might never have considered before. Do you know that detectives, doctors, writers and others who need to enhance their perception of detail use slow looking at art to pierce the veil of bias and judgment that clouds their first impressions? A two-year study published in the Journal of the AMA found that medical students who studied artwork improved their diagnostic skills considerably but that their observational skills, specifically their detection of details also increased by 10%.
A painting sits unchanged in quiet solitude waiting for the viewer ready to come before it. Secrets and stories hidden inside its four corners wait to reveal themselves to a viewer ready to show up open, aware, and prepared to listen. The more we observe art specifically for the details, the more we will see them. Art permits us to take all the time we need and return to it again and again to look some more.
Consider the famous painting by Edward Hopper called "Nighthawks". You may have seen it 10 or 100 times in your lifetime, but you probably never stopped to really look at it carefully. Where do you think this scene takes place? It looks like it might be taken from a film noir detective story. What time of day is it? The streets are dark and the only light comes from inside the bar. What are the relationships of the four people in the painting? Is it a coffee shop, a restaurant, or a bar? Is this picture inviting you in?
The man and woman might be touching hands, but they aren’t. The waiter and smoking man might be conversing, but they’re not. The couple might strike up a conversation with the man facing them, but somehow, we know they won’t. And then we realize that Hopper has placed us, the viewer, on the city street, with no door to enter the diner, and yet in a position to evaluate each of the people inside. We see the row of empty counter stools nearest us. We notice that no one is making eye contact with anyone else. Up close, the waiter’s face appears to have an expression of horror or pain.
Are there other details you notice? What other questions arise for you?
When you are ready to practice observing a work of art, select a museum or gallery and a painting for your extended art experience. Take yourself on an artist date, by yourself or with a friend who will enjoy a leisurely day looking at just a few pieces for a longer period of time. You might even try this with a work of art in your own home.
Select an artwork with enough detail to keep you engaged. Your artwork can be from any time period and any genre. Bring a journal for taking notes. Find a comfortable spot where you can sit undisturbed as you observe your selected painting. Most museums have benches in the galleries for just this purpose.
Scan:
Scan the whole surface of the painting, working methodically, and rhythmically from side to side and top to bottom. No judgments, no evaluations, no search for meaning. Just looking. Do nothing but look at the painting with painstaking concentration developing a sense of increased awareness along the way.
As soon as you label any aspect of the painting you are no longer noticing, you are studying it. You want to form a connection with the painting first, live the experience and only afterward attempt to understand it.
Take a mental snapshot. Try to get the whole image in focus and then press the button. Close your eyes and consult with the mind’s eye to see how effectively it recalls the recorded information. After a minute or so, open your eyes to compare your mind’s eye image with the real thing.
You will probably notice that your mind registered very little at first glance.
Next, choose a corner and then follow a three-inch perimeter around the entire painting, making the trip as slow and thorough as possible, so that no single detail is skipped along the way. When you return to your corner, turn around and make a second tour in the opposite direction. You can go around a third time if you desire.
Next, locate the center of interest in the painting. It is usually not in the physical center of the work and can usually be recognized because it has the most detail and the most contrast of value, shape, and color. Look at one area of interest at a time in the painting. Closely examine the details and relationships of shape, color, and movement.
Allow your focus to zoom out all the way back to the edges until the entire surface is again in focus. See if you notice a physical sensation or a strong emotion.
Break:
Take a break. Close your eyes and pause for a few moments. Pay attention to what is happening at your heart and gut level, and what thoughts, judgments, and emotions might be arising. It could be as simple as “I’m bored” to a welling up of grief or sadness.
Return to the painting and find a new unexplored area to review and record in your mind’s eye. You should have a growing resource of remembered detail. Continue alternating exploration with breaks for recreating the art in your mind’s eye.
Once you have observed the painting for a while and you feel like you have the image captured in your mind you are ready to go deeper.
Assess, Analyze, Articulate, Ask and Adapt:
Assess: Begin by collecting the facts; who, what, when, and where.
What do you think is going on in the painting? What relationships do you see - between people and objects? What questions does the painting elicit?
There is a clear distinction between passive sight and active assessment. Observation is a study of facts. Knowing we have perceptual filters that can color or cloud what we see means it will take time to cull the actual facts from our observations. Which is a fact and which is a judgment from these statements below? There are nine people in this painting. The tall man is wearing a pony tail. The two people standing close together are married. (see painting above)
Analyze: Pay attention to your perceptual filters. Are you seeing relationships or emotions in the artwork that are not explicitly stated?
Change perspective physically and mentally, reorient to better see the small details and the big picture. Ask yourself, what am I tuning out? What might I be taking for granted? What would a foreigner or alien coming into my world not know? Would the scene above make sense to them?
Much of the interaction by the artist with the work in the studio is time spent sitting and gazing at/contemplating the image he/she is creating. How much time do you think the artist spent gazing as the work progressed? What judgments, choices, and decisions might they have followed?
If you are a painter yourself you might want to consider “how” the artist created the work. What processes, tools, and techniques were employed? Is the artist particularly skillful in your opinion? Can you tell which materials were used and how they were applied?
Articulate: Writing about art is a great way to develop your descriptive powers and spelling out your observations will help you to notice if there is something you overlooked in the painting. Make notes in your journal to describe what you see and do not see in this artwork. What words would you use to describe and explain it to someone else? Note anything conspicuously absent that should be there to give an even more precise description of what you perceive.
One of the intriguing things about a painting is the paradox between its literal silence as a purely visual object and its implication of sound. What sort of music would you like to be listening to as you gaze on the painting? It is unmoving and yet agitated movement is sometimes suggested. Can you articulate how the painting makes you feel, smell, hear?
Continue taking breaks to envision the work every few minutes
Each time you return to the painting, notice if there is anything new to surprise you. Regardless of how slowly and carefully you look there is always some undiscovered detail to call out to you.
Ask: Many people feel asking for assistance will make them seem incompetent but the opposite is true. People have probably approached you as you sat. Ask them to share what they notice and perceive in your chosen artwork.
Ask Google about the story of this painting and the artist who created it to give it more context in terms of history and the movements and discoveries being made in the art world at the time of its creation.
Adapt/ Realign: How has your perception of the artwork changed as a result of your extended observation and investigation? How have you changed through this process? What have you discovered about yourself?
I hope you feel that even if you never see this painting again it is now as alive inside you as it is with the artist who created it.
Because we live in a culture of distraction, extended focus like this can feel very uncomfortable at first. Are you aware that the average person checks their phone 110 times a day and nearly once every 6 seconds in the evening? Our perpetual byte-size interactions are a detriment to our concentration, focus, productivity, and personal safety and they lower our IQ. Students who were distracted while working on complicated math problems took 40% longer to solve them.
Extended looking at art can train you to be more present and to recognize the ways your mind filters the world around you and inside of you in a way that can keep you trapped inside your prejudices and preconceptions.
Would you enjoy putting this process of extended looking at art into action? Would you find it tiresome or invigorating? Thoroughness and thoughtfulness are not core values for everyone, and if you make them a priority, they can help you stand out from the crowd of people who just don’t bother. Close observation of art is a practice that will help you to build both of these important values.
Simply knowing how unreliable your first perception is can help alleviate miscommunication and misunderstanding. Recognizing that you can’t always trust what you see can prevent you and me from getting upset with others when they don’t see things the way we do. The fact is they don’t and they can’t. No one can see things like you do except you. There is always more to be discovered and uncovered when you stay curious and engaged.
Pay close attention to everything around you, breathe consciously and do all you can to stay in the present moment. This is what DaVinci meant by “seeing”. Invention is less about creation than it is about discovery. What can you notice that no one else sees? Awareness makes each moment in every area of our lives more creative and meaningful.
Here are the books I used as resources for this essay. I found them fascinating and you might too.
“Slow Looking” by Peter Clothier
“Visual Intelligence” by Amy E. Herman
“How to Look at a Painting” by Francoise Barbe-Gall
Please reach out to me if you would like my help discovering yourself through art. I welcome the opportunity for conversation, collaboration, and commissions.
With Light and Delight
Susan
