Trying to see
Trying to see, and trying to get on with painting
I
Process Notes: On “trying-to-see” pictures
Pictures, like wood, should have texture, or grain, especially up close. You should be able to count the rings, or loops or swirls or whatever the texture happens to be. And so textural grain can be one aspect of a “trying-to-see” picture.
But pictures can be “trying-to-see” for many reasons - whether it is because of compositional logic, or incongruous elements, or even challenging content.
Of course when those pictures happen to be paintings the textural “inteference” makes particular sense.
Paint medium is plastic after all (sometimes literally). But even sketches or works in dry media should have that bottomless, fathomless inner rhythm or swirl like, to quote Mishima, “ a whirling bottomless abyss”.
How to describe “trying-to-see” pictures in a way that respects their hard-to-penetrate essence?
I feel the best or the most interesting pictures are what I like to call “trying to see” pictures (note I don’t say “paintings” as this idea applies to all kinds of pictures from sketches to photographs).
In such pictures there are certain challenges presented to seeing what is being represented. We as viewers must work extra hard to view things “correctly” or by some logic that marries with our own experience - things need to be figured out. And in the process of figuring out what is occurring in our visual field we may adjust our way of seeing things if only for a moment - which is a wonderful gift for any one picture to bestow.
II Process Notes: Trying to get on with painting
I’ve put aside my sketchbooks again.
I work in phases. I either work on sketchbooks or I paint. There is no flow between the two. There probably should be! But for me a sketchbook is a project.
Last year I worked on paper instead for much of the time and I must say I preferred it by and large, because it makes little odds if your sketches occur on good loose paper or in a sketchbook. In fact, the work that appears on loose paper is transformed by this fact - it is suddenly no longer a sketch. It becomes a study.
So 2025 was a year of studies and works on paper which I have resumed just lately after wanting a little winter regression into musing sketchbook work to light up the colder months.
III
Process Notes:
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