Lily Tomlin once said, “I always wanted to be somebody when I grew up. I should have been more specific.”

It is, perhaps, symptomatic of the weakness of our faith that we question or have second thoughts regarding our life choices. I’ve spent most of my life as an “art teacher” or something that, at least, might fit under that broad heading. I rationalized my work in a multitude of ways: I was helping students to see and to strengthen their perception. I was providing moments of peace and pleasure in the midst of their difficult lives and, somehow, hoping to make life a little less difficult for them. I was increasing their competency with materials. I was introducing them to people (“artists”) who, despite the pain and difficulty of life, persisted – and were able to extract a measure of truth and beauty. And so on…

It’s taken far longer than it should have, but I’ve realized (I would say “finally realized,” but I know that thoughts often change and that ‘realizations’ are seldom ‘final.’) – I’ve realized that the importance of work in the arts rests with the maker or performer rather than in any recipient or audience. Art-making matters because communication in the physical (words, images, gestures) convinces us that the physical always speaks to us; that meaning is always present – revealed in the people, places, and things around us.

The effort to give tangible form to the ineffable leads us to admit that physical form can reveal the transcendent. This is particularly true in the natural, which is less limited and less contingent than the synthetic. This accounts for much of the current culture’s estrangement from God. Absorption in the synthetic is a self-imposed blindness. The scales must be removed from our eyes.

Art-making teaches us that incarnation is possible, that the aspects of our lives that cannot be described in words need not remain entirely hidden and that physical form can be a vehicle of revelation and self-revelation. Certainly, as teachers, we’ve affected the lives of those around us and we can only hope and pray that we’ve done no harm – but the paintings we make, the work we do, and the tasks we’re given have more to do with shaping us than impacting others.

One of the very first things we learn (typically at 8-12 months) is object permanence – the understanding that people or objects continue to exist when they are no longer present to our senses. We learn this through countless experiences in which people and objects remove themselves from our presence and then return. Their reappearance assures us. We acquire faith in their existence.

If we are believers, we’ve acquired faith in God in much the same way. As the people and objects in our lives repeatedly appear and withdraw, so does the sense of God’s presence – and just as the child who cries when the parent leaves the room, we are in despair when we feel that God has abandoned us or ceased to exist. Yet God does not withdraw from us. We withdraw or obscure any sense of His presence through a myriad of distractions, electronic and otherwise. Just as the parent never actually leaves the child alone, God remains present for us, even though we’re temporarily unable to see Him. In time, when we can restore our focus or remove the barricades, He “returns” to us; we sense His presence or see the work of His hands. Faith increases.

There are memories and thoughts, often embedded in objects, that provide a measure of relief from the temporary despair of aloneness – cherished verses, photographs, memorabilia of all sorts – even places, sounds, colors, or qualities of light. They all offer us the assurance that our loss is not absolute or final. I would suggest that works of art occasionally function to assist us in a similar way. They can provide a presence to comfort us when the initial experience has withdrawn or provide at least what Robert Witkin (The Intelligence of Feeling) has called a “holding form,” a structure to temporarily maintain the essence of a thought or feeling, when the totality of that thought or feeling is no longer available to us. Art objects capture just a glimpse of a larger body of thought. They are, admittedly, partial and can only point to our experience, but, even with their limitations, they are invaluable.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1 ESV

When I contemplate the infinite complexity of everything I see before me, I can’t help but consider all that remains unseen – both the inconceivably small and the inconceivably large. We live in such a very small slice of all that is – let alone all that was or all that will be – and human perception receives only a minuscule sample. Most of Creation either can’t or won’t be seen by human eyes. (I find this to be of some consolation as I continue to paint and stack paintings under tables or in closets – perhaps some day to be seen – or perhaps never.)

So – we keep looking – all the while confidently expecting to discover something new and to find surprises. We’re usually not disappointed. However, Creation doesn’t require an audience. It simply is. There is no ‘performance,’ no frame or stage curtain to separate us from artifice; no anticipated narrative plot or conclusion. It exists for its own sake and in its own time – past and present. God’s identity is simply ‘I AM.”

We can only view Creation from within – we’re a part of it. There exists no objective, external space where we can sit comfortably as neutral spectators. We are contained within the spectacle. We perceive little and comprehend less and yet that very small sampling occupies all of the years that we’re given. We’re surrounded by overabundance. To grasp even the smallest portion, we have no recourse but to simplify – to abstract – we draw; we paint; we write… Our very thoughts are abstractions and constructions drawn from our collective experience. Our expressions are abstractions of abstractions, crudely translating experience into sound, word, and image.

2 Corinthians 4:18 (KJV): “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal”.

I’ve been painting for quite a long time and have made quite a few paintings, but there are many more paintings that were never made. Some exist only as quickly scribbled notes, some as drawings or ideas in a sketchbook, and some as unfinished canvasses, but most exist only as hazy memories or passing thoughts. They exist just as do all of those people we never knew or relationships we never had. There are those we knew only through a momentary glance, a recognition – someone with whom there appeared to be a connection – but it never happened – there was only the brief meeting of our eyes and perhaps a smile. There are those we knew in what now seems a former life, but time has passed, and our memories may only be those of our own construction.

This is not a statement of regret, but only an observation. The paths we followed were ordained – the paths we did not take were ordained as well. Like an experience of conceptual or postmodern art, the description may carry more import than any attempt at expression. If there were to be an exhibition of those paintings that I never made, what might it include? There would be the landscapes – too pretty to capture the complexities of personal struggles. The abstractions – combinations of shapes and colors either subtle or striking and sublime but with an insufficient anchor to our current existence. The portraits – recognized or generic faces – perhaps only illuminated by the light of a cell phone but simply ‘one-liners’ with nothing further to say. These paintings were never made since they failed to be sufficiently compelling or significant; or because an adequate form could not be found for those thoughts and experiences which were too personal or too transcendent; or, more practically, because the vision faded too quickly, overcome by more immediate needs or obligations.

In many ways, the work in this fictional exhibit holds more value than those physical objects that I did make, for in making physical work, there’s always limitation and reduction. The physical products can only point to a thought or experience. The unmade work may hold aspects of my delusion, but it is replete.

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.

There exists a general confusion among viewers of paintings. When a clear, objective ‘subject’ or recognizable object is not apparent, the term ‘abstract’ is liberally applied. In many of those cases, the ‘subject’ may be the form itself. Metaphorically, that form may lead us to infer feelings, thoughts, substantive content or make other associations. Human beings, after all, innately seek meaning – and will fabricate it if they cannot discern it.

At times, we may be directed towards a meaning by the title of the piece. That may not always be the case and I have known painters to intentionally mislead their audiences by assigning random or nonsensical titles. If there is no useful title, we’re left to simply respond to the form. It’s all we have. It is debatable whether a work can be truly non-representational or non-objective even though such labels may be applied.

In painting, to abstract literally means to draw (in the sense of pull) from. The painter, when confronted with an object or scene, selects (draws from) the object or scene those features (perhaps only shape or color) that will best capture the idea, thought, feeling, sensation, or association that’s desired. Abstraction is primarily a subtractive or reductive process required whenever our senses are overwhelmed by detail or complexity. In that sense, all art is abstract. The advantage of abstraction to the viewer is that it permits the insertion of personal perception into the gaps provided by all the omitted detail.

It requires something of us – a tactile or vicarious participation – reciprocity. Rather than delivering meaning wholesale, which makes only a very small claim on our interest, abstraction encourages involvement and participation by the viewer in order to construct meaning. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), Marshall McLuhan classifies media as being either cool or hot, based upon the degree of required audience participation. Setting aside the temperature references, the point is that the various means of human communication demand different levels of involvement (reciprocity). In our present technological culture, the value of personal touch has been diminished through the proliferation of media that demand little or nothing from us.

Abstraction may be a requirement of our own mortal insufficiency. We are, in a sense, abstractions of what we were intended to be. And we are conscious of our abstract existence every moment of our lives. We live with a pervasive sense that there is much that is missing. Abstraction, itself, is a condition, not a flaw – or it might be said that it’s a condition that has resulted from a flaw. Our brokenness has limited us, has reduced us to mortal abstractions of what might have been. We advance that abstraction. We edit our appearances to produce a more acceptable version of ourselves that we believe to be more suitable to others. Deceit and delusion are also forms of abstraction.

Perhaps this persistent reduction through abstraction is needed to provide an incentive for reaching out beyond ourselves to fill the gaps left by our brokenness. Abstraction is not accidental. It is the result of a choice. Perhaps the abstraction of our lives is the result of the ‘fog’ in which we exist – or perhaps it is the cause…

As, in Ruskin’s words, “I am, to my much sorrow, now an older person,” I’ve come to realize that the aches and pains of aging are not entirely physical. Perhaps they’re only a symptom of accumulated experience, knowledge, regret, and the sadness for our fallen state. We carry too much. The aged view does not permit things to be merely what they are. A lifetime of experiences and associations attends all that we see. Everything is encumbered by ‘baggage.’ Younger people often choose not to listen to their elders since they often find it too disheartening. The broader view afforded by age is not necessarily a pleasant one.

People today speak of our culture as “polarized” or divided. There’s a distinction. The existence of poles presupposes that there is a transitional space, a gradation, between one and the other. Polarization does not mandate total separation, but division may go beyond simple polarization and can refer to complete and absolute separation.

In a world that has translated everything into ones and zeros, what else could we expect? In a world of ones and zeros, we are cataclysmically divided and isolated, not polarized. It is mystifying and contradictory that our 1/0 culture wants to take those things (i.e., gender) which are, by nature, divided and biologically distinct, and focus on a mythical transitional space. The acceptance of a polarized view of gender contradicts a technological culture that views the world in a binary manner. Early references to the computer as a “brain” were unfortunate and we’ve now come to accept a computerized model for human thought that, like most models, omits the most interesting and important parts. I prefer a landscape, seen in person, to a map.

1/0 existence is not + and -. In a +/- duality there is room for debate and/or dialectic. There are degrees of positivity and degrees of negativity and a transitional space between them. There are no such degrees or transitions when everything translates to either a one or a zero. Ones and zeros permit no debate – you are either “on” or “off.” There is no middle ground. It is, of course, ironic, that the original meaning of “digitize” was to “touch with the fingers,” when the infinite variations of the sense of touch do not permit translation into ones and zeros.

Most of the time, the most important things can be found in the gaps, the empty spaces – synapses between nerve cells; the gap between thoughts and words (read between the lines); meditation in solitude.

The best thing fishing taught me, I think, was how to be alone. Without this ability no writer can really survive or work, and there is a strong relationship between the activity of the fisherman, letting his line down into the unknown depths in the hope of catching an unseen prey (which may be worth keeping, or may not) and that of the writer trolling his memory and reflections for unexpected jags and jerks of association. O beata solitudo – o sola beatudo! Enforced solitude, as solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people’s amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the world’s great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at. Our culture puts enormous emphasis on “socialization,” on the supposedly supreme virtues of establishing close relations with others: the psychologically “successful” person is less an individual than a citizen, linked by a hundred cords and filaments to his or her fellow-humans and discovering fulfillment in relations with others. This belief becomes coercive, and in many cases tyrannous or even morbid, in a society like the United States, with its accursed, anodyne cults of togetherness. But perhaps as the psychiatrist Anthony Storr pointed out, solitude may be a greater and more benign motor of creativity in adult life than any number of family relations, love affairs, group identifications, or friendships. We are continually beleaguered by the promise of what is in fact a false life, based on unnecessary reactions to external stimuli. Inside every writer, to paraphrase the well-worn mot of Cyril Connolly, an only child is wildly signaling to be let out. “No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect,” wrote Thomas DeQuincey, “who does not at least checker his life with solitude.”

– from Things I Didn’t Know by Robert Hughes (pp. 108-109)

In solitude we can focus on our being and, in a dialectic manner, our non-being. Life confronts us with problems, and ‘we’ are, most often, the source of those problems. Considerable efforts are expended in trying to remove that source from our consciousness. Solitude is difficult and the quiet leaves us restless because we must confront ourselves. No solution we imagine can still maintain our own existence.

In Richard II, Scene 5, Shakespeare writes:

“Nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.”

Meditation in solitude becomes prayer out of sheer necessity.

Referring to the observation of nature, John Ruskin wrote in Modern Painters (Vol. 2, 3:3:20): “Greatness can only be rightly estimated when minuteness is justly reverenced.” We hurry through life as though our only goal is to arrive at its end. Hurrying through life as we do, we miss the details upon which all else depends. Meaningfulness cannot be discerned by the cursory glance. There are no ordinary or empty moments. Live slowly with patience and appreciate small things done well.

Our God is a god of the infinite and the infinitesimal.

Of course, there is THE Incarnation, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us at a specific moment in history. That’s the necessity of our human condition – since we lack a faith sufficient to make evidence unnecessary. Everything that is intangible must become tangible. Every feeling and thought must manifest itself. We speak and create sound, a physical disturbance. God “spoke” and created the tangible world.

Jesus Christ was not presented to us as a metaphor – but rather as a fulfillment – the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9-10). In human cases of incarnation, the tangible product of our labors is always inferior to the ideas and images which drive it. Metaphor is a form of incarnation, but it acknowledges its own insufficiency.  We might describe metaphor as a form of imperfect or diverted incarnation.

As physical beings we can only truly grasp that which is physical. The intangible remains ineffable – it dwells in the realm of feelings and mental constructs – dreamlike and not fully knowable.

With our limited capabilities we usually experience meaningfulness through comparison – seeing one thing, in some inexplicable way, as similar to another. To borrow a phrase from Walker Percy, the best we can hope to do is to somehow fix the evolving meanings in time as ‘signposts’ for further contemplation and reflection. We shape sounds, movements, and images in a vain attempt to match the ineffable or, at least, point to it. We make (or find) things that, by their very nature, are not what we seek, but, nevertheless, are suitable to contain at least a few aspects of our experiences. We find objects or shape physical material – wood, paint, words – because we are partly physical and because it’s what we have.

In the arts it’s common to speak of an image, a sound, or a sequence of words as “capturing” an idea, feeling, or experience. ‘Capture’ is a particularly appropriate word choice since what we’ve done is to make something that holds the idea, feeling, or experience; that preserves it, at least for a while, against the ravages of time. What we hold can then be examined in more detail at our leisure. However, we soon find that what we hold is only a fragment – but, hopefully, enough to find our way or point us in the right direction. We have, of necessity, abstracted experience through reduction.

The work is layered – paintings built upon sounds, words, and other images. I recall a small etching by Rembrandt at the Uffizi many years ago – a Sacrifice of Isaac, and the only work that immediately brought tears to my eyes – the arm of the angel lovingly wrapped around Abraham as the sacrifice is averted – an image founded upon numerous encounters with faith, history, scripture, language, and other images – both natural and cultural.

It is all fireworks – the trajectories of our lives, beginning with an almost silent and invisible ascent, culminating in a burst of light and energy and then floating slowly to earth as the ash it was when it began… Such are the individual events, social contacts, careers, and all the rest that make up the times of our lives. We may gather these disparate occurrences together and call them ‘stories’ or ‘memories,’ but they’re all artificial constructions made from an unbroken fabric of human experience.

The ephemeral nature of experience demands a more durable form – so we make things of the physical material that surrounds us. The products may be paintings, writings, photographs, constructions of various sorts, etc. Others may refer to some of these products as “Art” but, if the maker is honest, he/she will shy away from such an evaluative term and simply be content with the process and its evidence. If the work is honest and authentic, it will be meaningful – perhaps only to the maker but perhaps to many others.