Silence can be a gift. Find a time. Find a place – a place away from the noise of the street; a place away from the chatter of conversations; a place away from the buzz and hum of appliances. Listen quietly to your own breathing and hear the beat of your heart. Resist the temptation to fill the empty space with sound. Just remain for a while – and listen.
Silence is not always just a cessation of noise. Just as there are many kinds of noise, there are many kinds of silence – the silence of respect and the silence of disdain, the silence of fullness and the silence of emptiness, the silence of expectation and the silence of fulfillment, the silence of immense spaces and the silence of small niches, the silence when we choose not to speak and the silence when nothing said can be sufficient, the silence of understanding and the silence of confusion, the silence of solitary isolation and the silence experienced amid the crowd, the silence of a brief pause and the silence of an endless rest.
I’d like my paintings to foster moments of quietude – leaving us in a restful silence with nothing specific to say or do, but only to pause in the presence of the work – aware only of its existence and our own.
A pause offers us a break in the action, a rest or respite. It is something that we frequently need. As children we were often told to be quiet or to pay attention. We need that advice even more as adults. We need to reduce our self-imposed distractions – cell phones, video screens, electronics and sound in general. We need to be reminded to eliminate the noise and pay attention. In drawing and writing, pauses and solitude are critical in order to clear our minds and quiet our voices. Stopping in the middle of a drawing or painting or turning a painting to the wall for a while fosters reflection and should be considered an intrinsic part of the process. It doesn’t connote surrender and can lead precisely to its opposite. Occasional intentional inactivity and silence may be the most beneficial choice we can make for our work and for our lives.