I have been thinking a lot lately about what I am actually doing when I paint. The obvious answer is that I am making pictures. Sometimes they are landscapes, sometimes animals or people, and sometimes the work becomes more abstract, fragmented or influenced by cubism. I work in oil pastel, acrylic and whatever else seems to make sense at the time, and I suspect all of that will continue to change. Increasingly, though, I don't think the subject, the material or even the style is really the point.
I think I am paying attention.
There is a phrase that has gradually come to mean something important to me: Presence Witnessing Presence. It probably sounds more complicated than it is. For me, it describes something that happens when we really look at something—or someone—without immediately needing to categorize it, explain it, judge it or change it. We simply notice what is there and, perhaps in doing so, become a little more aware of ourselves.
I notice this particularly when I paint animals. A moose standing in a field doesn't need anything from me. It isn't performing and doesn't particularly care whether I find it beautiful. There can be something quite extraordinary about that. For a moment we simply occupy the same place. I am aware of it, it is aware of me in whatever way a moose is aware of such things, and nothing more is required. There is something about those encounters that stays with me.
I experience something similar with landscape. I live in Alberta, where the sky can make you feel very small. The horizon can seem to go on forever. A storm can be gathering somewhere in the distance while the sun is still shining where you are standing. A field of canola can become an almost impossible yellow beneath a dark blue-grey sky. Nothing particularly dramatic needs to happen. Sometimes it is enough just to stand there and notice that you are there.
Painting has increasingly become a way for me to stay with those moments a little longer. I am not particularly interested in reproducing exactly what I see. I'm more interested in what happens somewhere between seeing something and experiencing it. That's where colour starts to change, shapes simplify, things become exaggerated or fragmented, and something that was physically in front of me becomes something else on the canvas. Sometimes the painting becomes quieter than the thing I saw. Sometimes it becomes much louder.
I think this is also why my work doesn't fit comfortably into one style. For a while I thought it needed to. Artists are supposed to have a recognizable style, after all, and there is certainly something appealing about being able to say, "This is what I do." But I'm not sure that is what I do. Modern cubism is one visual language I use. Representation is another, and abstraction another. Oil pastel behaves differently from acrylic, and a human face asks something different of me than a prairie horizon or an animal looking directly back at me. I am becoming much more comfortable allowing the work to decide what language it needs.
What seems to remain consistent is the encounter.
Perhaps that is also what I hope happens when someone stands in front of one of my paintings. I don't particularly want to tell you what to feel or even what the painting means. I can tell you what I was thinking about, what drew me to the subject, or something about what happened while I was making it, but once the painting leaves my hands I am no longer the only person in that conversation.
You bring something too. You bring your own history, memories, relationships, losses, joys and all the places you have stood. You may see something completely different from what I saw when I made the painting, and I rather like that possibility. In fact, I think the space between what I put into a work and what someone else discovers in it may be one of the most interesting parts of making art.
Perhaps a painting can do something that we don't always do particularly well for one another. It can simply stay. It doesn't interrupt. It doesn't need to provide an answer. It doesn't ask you to agree with it. You can spend ten seconds with it or return to it for years, and what you encounter may change because you have changed.
That brings me back to Presence Witnessing Presence. I don't really think of it as an artistic philosophy that needs to be defended or a definition that needs to be pinned down. It is more of a way of noticing what seems to keep happening in the work and, increasingly, in the way I experience the world around me. Something is present. I become present to it. And in that encounter, occasionally, something passes between us.
All of this has made me curious about what happens for other people. We spend so much of our lives moving quickly, interpreting what is happening around us, deciding what things mean and, often, deciding what we think about other people before we've really had much time to notice them. I wonder what changes when we don't do that quite so quickly.
So, rather than ending with an explanation of what Presence Witnessing Presence means to me, I'd like to leave you with a few things I've been wondering about.
When was the last time you felt genuinely seen by another person; not agreed with, praised or understood perfectly, but simply seen? What was it about that encounter that made it feel different?
And when was the last time you offered that kind of attention to someone else? Not listening while preparing your response or trying to help, but being fully present without needing the encounter to become anything other than what it was?
I wonder about place, too. Is there somewhere you go where you become more aware of your own presence? It might be somewhere extraordinary, but I suspect it doesn't have to be. What is it about that place that allows you to notice yourself differently?
Art can sometimes do this as well. Have you ever stood in front of a painting, listened to a piece of music, read something, or encountered something someone made and had the peculiar feeling that it somehow knew something about you? Perhaps something you hadn't been able to put into words yourself?
And finally, what might happen if, every once in a while, instead of immediately trying to understand, explain or judge what is in front of us, we simply stayed with it for a little longer?
I genuinely don't know what your answers will be, which is precisely why I'm interested. If one or more of these questions brings something to mind, I'd be pleased to hear about it. You don't need to answer all five—or even answer the questions I've asked. You can just share what you noticed.
Maybe that's enough.
I was here. You are here. Something is here between us, and for a moment, we noticed.
