What first drew you to making art and what early memories shape your practice?

A vivid early memory is going to the museums in New York City on a family trip and seeing famous paintings like Starry Night and many others. The physicality and texture of the canvases made a big impression, the thickness of the paint and the way the light ran across the surface… I liked the paintings as objects as much as I liked them as pictures of particular subjects. I remember seeing massive paintings at the Guggenheim and being a little mesmerized by their size and presence. I didn’t know how to describe the feeling at the time and maybe it didn’t feel like a life changing moment, but it planted some seed of fascination and began a lifetime of eager visits to museums.

My most persistent early fascination in art, however, was fantasy illustration. I loved the art in manuals for games like Dungeons & Dragons, the pencil sketches of swords and armor, the representations of monsters and characters that had the potential to spring to life in the game. I loved the possibilities they suggested, the sense of a world that could be created or explored. I would spend hours looking through books that compiled the best fantasy art of the year. I think for me the paintings in the museums and the fantasy art in the books had the same impression of being windows into a fantastic world. They all seemed to show a moment of a story frozen in a still picture, but you could feel what happened before and what might happen after.

Growing up, painting and drawing was part of daily life as my mom is a prolific watercolor artist and teacher. Every free surface and wall was used for paintings or art material storage, and that’s a habit I’ve inherited. The kitchen table was a used as a studio for the constant production of paintings. I was never short on my own art supplies and books, and when I had art classes I would try to apply whatever I learned to some kind of fantasy drawing. My primary recollection is a lot of trial and error trying to figure out the puzzle of drawing. I tried to work out different strategies to get from a blank page to a drawing, and how to handle things like values, composition, anatomy, and perspective without really knowing those words or how they fit together as a whole.

What is your background in the arts and where are you from? How has your background helped you get to where you are in your art practice?

Visual art took a back seat to music for me in high school, and I went to college for a music degree. However, in my college classes my interest in art was gradually rekindled through art history, graphic design, and many, many visits to museums while studying abroad, and I ended up spending more time in the art building than the music practice rooms.

I became a student of John Gordon (1940-2023) in his introductory drawing class at St. Norbert College and then I continued studying drawing and oil painting with John in his private art school after graduation. John’s teaching approach was rigorous and strategic, and he emphasized working from life rather than imagination for the purpose of study and developing drawing fluency. His teaching gave me the structure, experience, and encouragement I needed to connect the dots between all those elements of drawing I had tried to understand through trial and error. John became a close mentor and friend, and he introduced me to life drawing at a small portrait session in Green Bay.

Making still life paintings of apples and flowers from direct observation may seem to be quite a traditional and restrained contrast to the imaginative fantasy qualities that sparked my early attraction to art. But of course life drawing is an essential practice of every great illustrator, animator, and concept artist. The more we study from life, the more life we can imbue in our paintings even if they’re imagined or invented.

When I make a series of drawings or paintings, I like to imagine them as documents of a fantasy world, even when they are rather direct studies from life. I like to imagine the landscapes as settings and the portraits as characters like the ones in the pages of a game manual. I like the pictures to appear to be grounded in the mundane, but to have a sense that something more arcane is slowly sneaking out through the canvas. Whether it’s a fantasy illustration or a plein air landscape, the underlying desire is the same: to notice the hidden presence beneath the surface and record the fleeting enchantment of life.

How did you come up with the Appleton Drawing Club? How have your experiences helped shape the club? What is your favorite part of leading this group?

A few years ago during a plein air painting trip I had the opportunity to attend several life drawing sessions in London. I already valued working from life from my classes with John, and I had attended a few portrait drawing sessions previously, but this was the first time I had extended time to dive into the full possibilities of what life drawing could be. I was traveling to paint landscapes outside, but I ended up inside lofty studios making portrait and figure drawings with charcoal. At my first figure drawing session, I immediately realized there were endless layers to drawing I had yet to discover. The short poses knocked me out, and I was faced with the mysteries of drawing as though I was starting again at the beginning. I started looking for the life drawings of artists I admired, and found myself drawn more and more to the expressive power of life drawing and the human form. I liked that I could see the artist thinking on the page, and see the early layers of a drawing before they’re covered up by the “finished” drawing. They gave me the same spark of excitement as the art in the game manuals, that same sense of aliveness and potential energy.

I also loved the camaraderie of artists in the life drawing studio, the shared focus and attention, the friendly conversation and commiseration about drawing breakthroughs and disasters. I love this feeling when out plein air painting with other artists too, drawing together is a great joy. I could feel the potential for life drawing to be a source of skill development for artists but also a source of community and creative encouragement. Overall, I became intensely focused on figure and portrait drawing, and I knew I needed more opportunities to go to life drawing sessions.

Coming home, I looked for sessions to join. The closest figure sessions were about an hour drive away and only happened once a month, and I would go as often as I could. Over time I recognized that there was a lack of access to a regular, high quality evening session between Door County and Milwaukee, and that there were likely many artists in the area who would enjoy the opportunity to regularly practice life drawing or try it for the first time. When I moved to Appleton from Green Bay in 2023, I was looking for a studio for myself in town and I met John Adams. He showed me the space that was under renovation to become Photo Opp, and I realized it would be a perfect venue for life drawing. I shared the idea, Photo Opp was generously supportive in sharing their space and introducing me to the local community, and Appleton Drawing Club had its first session in April 2024.

Two years later, Appleton Drawing Club has grown far beyond the initial simple goal to host a monthly figure drawing session. We now have weekly classic sessions, special themes and workshops, and unique events like wildlife drawing with falcons, hawks, and owls. At the heart of it all, my favorite part has been getting to know hundreds of artists and models and seeing their creative practice grow through making art together. I believe that life drawing is a way to make the world a little more curious and kind, and I’m grateful that the drawing club has been a part of the vibrant creative community in the area.

Three words that describe your current work or series.

Stone dance hauntology

Where do you find inspiration? Or who or what has been inspiring to you?

I have what I would call an ongoing research and development project where I making figure drawings on alternative surfaces like marble and slate tiles, origami paper, wood, etc. The work on stone has been particularly inspiring and I have a sense that it may grow into a larger project.

I’ve been reading a lot about narrative landscapes like stone circles and caves with ancient paintings. Hauntology is the idea that the past, and perhaps the future, can have a disrupting persistence in the present, and that in places where this happens there’s a high potential for spells to be broken and re-enchantment to happen. I like the sense of disruption, contrast, and rupture, that a painting or drawing can disrupt a surface or a place and be a presence that creates a way for enchantment to sneak in.

I think this can happen with odd combinations like putting a figure drawing on an unexpected surface or placing fine art in the context of a mundane environment like a warehouse store. The disjointed combination gives a sense that an ancient presence might show up in your shoe or something, or that it’s easier to perceive the life simmering beneath the surface when there’s a rough edge in the seams of what you can perceive. I try to make drawings that leave those rough textures where a presence can pass through.

Which materials and tools do you rely on, and why those specifically?

I love soft, bold drawing materials where I can access a wide range of marks with the same tool. So I like charcoal, sanguine, and pastels, materials that feel halfway between painting and drawing. Often I use powder from these materials and draw with them with a brush. I recently started experimenting with making soft charcoal sticks using left over sticks and stems from my garden.

I enjoy the process of preparing surfaces for painting and drawing. I’ll make panels for painting at odd sizes and prep them with gesso. In particular I like using watercolor paper for charcoal drawing. I’ll often stretch the paper over stretcher bars and apply a size or ink tone to adjust the surface. The work on stone is its own category of experimentation since they vary greatly in texture and smoothness. The stone has a much greater influence on the drawing process than when I’m drawing on paper.

What’s an obstacle you regularly meet in making work, and how do you solve it?

I fill every empty space with sketchbooks and paintings and never quite know how to organize it. It’s an unsolved problem that probably requires specialized furniture.

Do you teach — what do you learn from that?

Feeling like a “beginner” can be refreshing and inspiring, but it is also an uncomfortable experience to feel completely out of your depth. Almost every time I draw I have a moment of feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing or how to start or finish. When I teach drawing classes, I feel that way even more often as I consider how to demonstrate a process or design an exercise for a particular drawing skill. Of course as any teacher will tell you, helping someone else learn is one of the best ways to clarify your own understanding, and teaching gives me plenty of opportunity for repetition and iteration.

My focus when I’m teaching is of course to help students become fluent in drawing by developing their practical skills and habits. But the real goal is to encourage and support students in developing their creative skills as a whole, skills that apply to any creative practice. I like to say that practicing art involves skills of the eyes (how to see), hands (expanding the range and quality of your marks), mind (knowledge of our subject and visual concepts), and heart (what we’re curious about, what we love, what we long for, what we miss). Teaching reminds me that all of these grow together as an artist develops their vision and expression. By nature art classes focus on the eyes, hands, and mind, but I hope to create a space where artists can also exercise their hearts.

I’ve gradually collected feathers from our back garden over the last few years, including the crow feathers and mourning dove feather in this painting. I also found the pigeon feather in the back garden of the house we stayed at when visiting London recently.

I often walk around the neighborhood and collect organic fragments that have fallen on the ground like leaves, acorns, and feathers, and I like to think of it as foraging for paintings. I had made this tall cradled panel long enough ago that I don’t remember when it was. I had a few ideas for the panel that I never got to but finally found a fit with the feathers. The process of collecting the feathers and making the panels was slow and unplanned, taking years to gradually unfold.

The tall composition and fuzzy atmosphere gives a sense that the sequence is a single feather falling through space and recorded over time, but in reality they’re distinct feathers resting on a surface in my studio. I tried it out by laying the feathers on the panel itself since they were painted about life size. It kind of reminds me of the Animorphs book covers where a human character gradually transforms into an animal.

In a way the slow gathering of feathers and the painting itself is about the rhythm of home, or places we call home, and a journal of how home isn’t one place but stretches across space and time. I like the lilting, singing cadence of the title, “Crow, Crow, Pigeon, Dove”, because it sounds like many conversations Alex and I have when we’re at home or walking around the neighborhood and all we do is call out the names of birds we notice. I think that’s the rhythm of being at home together, just sharing what you notice with each other.

“Crow, Crow, Pigeon, Dove” will be included in the Little Known Art House group show May 6th through June 20th. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, May 9th 10AM-12PM. Thanks to Jackie for including this piece in the show! I hope to see you there!

Crow, Crow, Pigeon, Dove
Oil on cradled panel
7.25 in. (w) x 24 in. (h)
2026

Well, this is where I’ll live, what to do to make the most of it? Every day the trains go by, and I feel the desire to grow, grow. Some days feel different, warmer or colder, sunny or rainy. The frequency of the trains changes once a week on Sundays. Sometimes someone comes and takes part of me, so the people on the train can see the signs more clearly. This is a holy day, because I can start growing all over again.

This is how I feel in the studio lately. Making the most of being where my roots are, in a cycle of growing, pruning, and regrowing, every day similar but a variation.

What has been pruned away? What can be seen more clearly now? What is growing in the space and time? I’m not sure I have enough distance to make sense of it yet.

I’ve been drawing a lot of doves.

Today I was listening to on his podcast, reflecting on the type of magic he is attuned to. Not quite a wizard, actually, and certainly not a witch. A bard, perhaps. I love when Jason teases out nuances like this, because inevitably it encourages me to do the same investigation and ask the same questions of myself. What kinds of magic am I drawn to?

I wrote several years ago about how I often found myself playing low magic characters and interested in low magic settings in games. Perhaps by placing myself within the mundane, it was a way to make the magic shine by contrast. But it was also a protective armor, shielding me from what might happen if I allowed myself to actually enter the arcane and experience it directly, or to let others see me doing so.

Sometime around the turn of the millennium, I acquired my first copy of the D&D rule books. My friend, David, and I saw the episode of Dexter’s Laboratory in which Dexter acts as a fiendish game master, torturing his friends with traps, monsters, and impossible mazes.

David and I were already immersed in the patterns of role playing games, but through video game variations—Earthbound, Pokémon, Super Mario RPG. The concept of a game we could play together at a table with only our imaginations, dice, paper and pencil was immediately captivating. Anything was possible. It would be a world with no limitations except what we could invent. It was the ultimate promise, the feeling we were chasing in video games. It was the invented stories of childhood toys and playground games, but given form and shape through the solid foundation of a rulebook.

The Dexter’s episode, however, didn’t name Dungeons & Dragons as the parody source material. We were desperate to play this game, but we had no idea what to look for and were only beginning to become proficient at surfing the World Wide Web to seek enlightenment.1 So, we invented our own rules.

We got the gist from the cartoon episode and ended up with a game remarkably similar to the structure of D&D, but with unique quirks. We dug some dice out of a random board game and took turns drawing maps and inventing monsters, traps, and encounters for each other as we explored each other’s dungeons. There was no treasure at the end of these dungeons, no grand finale or finish line. Only the magic of the game itself.

Eventually, the world of published tabletop roleplaying games was discovered. First I found free rulebooks online for D&D alternatives. I heard about D&D soon enough of course, but I didn’t know where to get the books, so I satisfied my curiosity with free downloads. I don’t remember the sequence of what happened next, but through the magic of thoughtful parents, the hallowed tomes appeared as gifts—a starter pack to play with my friends, the three core rulebooks, and a proper set of dice.

I certainly spent far more time leafing through the books than I did playing. The thing that drew me in the most wasn’t the character classes, spell lists, or monsters. It was the shopping. Lists of items with prices, and the idea that I could equip myself with these items and decide what to spend my limited gold pieces on.

And then, in the very back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, was the real treasure: wondrous items. Enchanted items. Rare, powerful, game-changing, and beautiful. There were rules for how a player could craft these items, but the costs were extraordinary. In the rules in that version of the game, your character would have to invest months of time, piles of gold, and even their own experience points to enchant a powerful magic item of their own. The design of the crafting system is logical—if they were easy to craft, these items would be common. But it also discouraged a specific kind of magic sensibility that wasn’t well represented in the standard character classes, the ability to craft items of such subtle care and quality that they became imbued with potential and transformed into a priceless treasure.

And so, these items were more likely to be the object of a quest, discovered in the dangerous twists of an adventure rather than crafted in a safe and quiet studio. The structure of the adventure arc encourages exploration over gardening — mapping, extracting, and collecting over crafting, repairing, and seeding. But in the end the story of the game itself is the craft, a shared enchantment over the table in which we transform an evening with friends into a priceless treasure.

In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of -- moments when we human beings can say “I love you,” “I’m proud of you,” “I forgive you,” “I’m grateful for you.” That’s what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff.

–Fred Rogers

This is the magic I’m drawn to. The “invisible, imperishable good stuff.” The practice of noticing the enchantment in these brief moments, the aliveness, wholeness, and crushing wonder of possibility. The idea that we might discern how to create enchanted objects with care, curiosity and kindness; how and when to engage with disenchantment and cursed items; how to perceive enchantment that already exists where we assume it is absent.

When I paint and draw, this is what I’m practicing. Perceiving that good stuff in the mundane, the inanimate, the disenchanted, and trying to record it on the canvas.

In the fantasy Stranger Things version of this story, my friends and I played every weekend in a basement through an epic campaign. In reality, it was all night sessions a few times a year with too much Mountain Dew. As the one who had all of the books, I was the default dungeon master, and we played at my kitchen table. Every roll of the dice is a shining moment.

Are you an enchanter in need of gear, materials, and hard-to-find components? Follow Enchantment Supply—for all your ephemeral needs.

A big thing I’m learning is how to get started in the studio without a lot of clarity on what’s actually going to happen. Part of me wants to be in the studio with a clear plan and goal, so I know what will exist a few hours later when I’m done for the day. But the more time I spend drawing the more I realize it’s like walking directly into the fog. I can have an intention of a direction, but the individual steps can only be taken in the moment. Sometimes I catch on to an exciting direction and follow it for quite a while to develop a whole series of paintings or drawings along the same pattern, but most often I feel on the edge of the unknown. If I’m not gentle with myself, that feeling of being on the edge can stop me from moving the pencil at all, so I have to give myself plenty of encouragement. The main thing I have to rely on is small inklings of desires or curiosity that hint toward possible next steps. Of course, all of this applies to life too.

I started this drawing as a warm up sketch, thinking I might figure out a few compositional ideas and then move on to a larger sheet of paper. But as often happens, I became engrossed in the process and took it a bit further than I thought I would. Half the battle is setting up the lighting and a comfortable space to work. I set up a stool near the mirror and skipped an easel since the sketchbook is small. I studied a few self portraits I admire as I set up the lighting. Once the space is set up, it’s a big relief because all that’s left to do is draw, and the momentum keeps me moving. I can get started, put it down, and come back as many times as I want without the friction of setting up the space and materials. I’m also learning that if I take the time to just organize my space, maintain my materials, and set up the subject and lighting, then the “art just happens” because everything is ready.

I chose this pose specifically because I’ve found quite a few self portraits from artists I admire in a similar pose, facing away but looking over the shoulder toward the viewer. I love the energy of the pose, the sense that the artist was engrossed in something and looked up in a moment of awareness. To draw a pose like this, I was looking back and forth between the mirror and the sketchbook, which helped keep a loose energy to the expression and the marks. Of course, now that I think more about it, the energy of the pose matches how I’m feeling at the moment around my birthday, being engrossed in the day to day stream of life and taking a brief moment to look up and look around.

Studio news:
- I'm teaching a gesture drawing workshop at the Trout Museum of Art later this month!
- My painting, "Scots Pine", is on view at Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts until February 27.
- Appleton Drawing Club is hosting a wildlife drawing event on February 18.
- This newsletter now has a paid subscription available! As a paid subscriber, you'll support my work and also receive more behind-the-scenes previews of what's going on in the studio and reflections on creative practice.

If the marble is super polished, the charcoal slides across the top and no mark is made. If it’s too rough, it’s hard to control the details of small marks and the roughness eats through the pencil. Sandpaper works well, but the fine dust dulls the contrast of the marble pattern and creates a matte appearance.

I wondered if I could apply a “size” to the marble. This is basically a layer of diluted glue that is often used as a base layer on wood or paper to stop the material from soaking in the oils from oil paint or other mediums. I’ve used this to adjust the tooth and quality of watercolor paper to use for charcoal drawing, and I wondered if it might 1) be completely transparent on the marble to keep the original contrast and 2) give the surface just enough tooth to be able to make marks.

Read more

This is my favorite tree. I love it for its visual splendor, the way the branches twist and flow out and I have to spin around to follow them. Its canopy creates a room, and its double trunk creates a chair.

It lives in a former golf course that is now a community urban farm that we walk through often. Next to it is a prairie, full of presumably native grasses and flowers that the deer, turkeys, and bees love. The bees live nearby in human built beehives.

It’s a place that is privately owned by the nonprofit that operates the farm and its programs, but is publicly accessible to the neighborhood to enjoy walking, sledding, and picnicking like a city park. The landscape still holds the contours of the golf course but the fairways are now filled with orchards, hoop houses, and half wild half designed meadows.

The Scots pine is happy to grow here, but it isn’t native to North America so it is only here because a human decided to plant it to ornament the landscape. The entire place is a contradiction. It is both wild and cultivated, public and private, loved and forgotten, beautiful and invasive. It is impossible to untangle the complex reasons and relationships that led to this place existing and this tree living within it.

Does it “belong” here? Is it tragic or enchanted? I don’t know if I should see it as an immigrant, a colonizer, or an invasive species. I don’t actually see it as any of these things, I just think of it as a neighbor. All I can do is visit and observe the changes that happen there and enjoy the tree.

Scots Pine
Oil on linen
Artist made poplar and oak frame
30 in. (w) x 20 in (h.)

Collect at Thelma

Dear reader, welcome back to the Pattern Workshop. If you don’t remember joining us, I’m your host, Kevin McGillivray, and this is a newsletter about practicing creativity, the Quality Without a Name, and general updates on what’s going on in my art studio.

There is too much to share to catch up, so we’re going to skip exposition, and start in medias res, and perhaps fill the blanks later with some well timed flashbacks.

Sanguine has gradually made its way into my studio over a couple years. I started with the very classical trois crayons, sanguine, charcoal, and chalk on a tan toned paper.

Earlier this year I picked up a new set of sanguine sticks and started experimenting with sanguine-only drawings during life drawing sessions. The feeling of drawing with sanguine is so similar to charcoal, and yet it has a distinct warmth and softness that wraps around your fingers when you’re drawing with it. Not only warmth in the actual red tone, but in the soft touch of the medium itself. When the stick warms up from being held and the friction on the page it starts to feel like clay or a pot warming on the stove.

At a life drawing session I made an arm study in sanguine that became the visual direction for a new series titled Red Mage. I loved the brilliancy of the red contrasted with the paper, and the immediacy of the study. I wanted to make more drawings in the same direction, and so the series gradually grew in the studio during what I called “sanguine summer.”

The “red mage” is a gaming reference, but I think it’s a deeper archetype that happens to have found its expressive footing in the medium of video games. In the Final Fantasy series, a red mage is a spellcaster that blends offensive black magic and healing white magic. As a class they are defined by their adaptability and their fluency in opposites, the ability to wield magic at the front line or distribute essential boons to support their companions, and to switch between the two modes in the blink of an eye.

Spellsword-style classes in various role playing games are also examples of the red mage archetype, a character who is equally comfortable with both the mundane sword and the arcane book. In the Legend of Zelda series, Link carries some of these qualities as he gains abilities throughout the game, and sometimes exchanges his classic green tunic for a red one. There’s also a sense of romance, style, and adventure to the red mage, the passionate mystery and bravado of a character like Zorro. They have a sense of hidden knowledge and fleeting identity.

The red mage feels impossible. How can one character blend such extreme opposites on their own and in combination? They synthesize seemingly incompatible opposites into a unified flow, and seem to have no problem shifting between modes. I think this is why the red mage archetype is found in so many subtle variations in games and myths, but is also not the default option of fighter, thief, mage, and healer. Similar to the Green Man living in the boundary between the human realm and the dark woods, the Red Mage is a liminal figure who lives in the threshold between the internal and external worlds, between action and stillness, spell and blade.

I imagine my art studio as a place at the boundary too. And I think for the past few years I’ve been drawing portraits of the guardians of that boundary—the Green Man, the Red Mage, and other anonymous protectors. The Red Mage knows when to be still and heal, and when to take swift action with a sharp sword, which is a hard earned wisdom. I also think the Red Mage represents very clearly what I believe is the underlying practice any creativity, becoming fluent in opposite modes and blending them into a new whole.

The drawings themselves range from full sized figure drawings, as well as studies of arms, hands, eyes, and legs in a variety of sizes. The Scrying Eye drawing on marble was a particularly exciting experiment. Scrying is a type of divination or fortune telling, or alternatively in some stories the ability to see far away places from the safety of the wizard’s tower. Typically it’s practiced with a translucent or reflective material—mirrors, crystals, smoke, water. This is also a kind of watchful protection of the boundary, an awareness of what might be on the other side that is otherwise hidden.

Last year I made a series of still life paintings called Material Components using marble as a background element in the painting, so marble has been a theme as a “surface” for a while now. Marble is inorganic, of course, but it’s admired for the flowing patterns on the surface that feel full of life, and that’s why I liked it as an element of the paintings. It seemed to echo the organic nature of the subjects in the background while being separate from it. It’s a bit ambiguous, unclear whether it is alive or not, or perhaps part of both worlds.

Over the last couple years I’ve experimented with a few other approaches to creating this organic type of pattern on a drawing surface, and in my studio I had a small marble tile that I had collected at one point. Eventually, I made the connection and wondered if it was possible to draw directly on the marble rather than imitating the effect. I’ll write more another time about how I’ve been experimenting with marble drawing, but it turns out that it works quite well, and I’m excited to make a lot more drawings on stone.

I’ve been gradually sharing pieces from Red Mage on my studio Instagram account, @enchantment.supply. I invite you to join me there to follow along, or stay up to date on the Enchantment Supply website.

He said the eggs were the most difficult subject he had attempted. He was committed to recording their subtle shifts in color, each one a unique value and hue. The canvases are large, but the composition is sparse—only two ovals and a negative space. They’re almost nothing but color.

When I saw the Eggs at an exhibit in 2017, another of my art teachers wondered why they should be so large, and perhaps a smaller, more life size framing would be more inviting and intimate. Thinking about this, I made a small egg painting myself a couple years later.

Painting small and large each have their own challenges. John himself encouraged me many times to make miniature paintings. A small canvas feels somewhat safer, and is often faster to paint. There’s a technical mastery benefit to completing many small paintings—you get more repetition in the complete painting process. However a small canvas also constrains the body. The eye zooms in to smallness, detail, and the muscles move in a more limited way at the scale of the knuckle and wrist rather than the elbow, shoulder, or hip. At the same time, there is less room to notate the detail we perceive at that scale. Everything gets a bit flattened.

There is courage and ambition in painting large. It feels somehow less safe, more risky, and more forward. The canvas takes up more room wherever it lives, it insists on being noticed, it can’t be hidden away. The large painting uses more materials, and pigment, surfaces, and turpentine can be expensive. The large painting is an investment. And with a larger scale, the scale of both the tools and muscles used scales up as well. Bigger brushes, bigger palette, bigger muscles. The whole body maps the painting surface, a muscular neurological cartography of color.

I haven’t asked John why he painted the Eggs so large. They are larger than life, almost out of proportion to the human scale. But after painting a small egg of my own, I think I understand. John is a painter obsessed with color. I think he wanted the Eggs to be a magnum opus of color—to show, freely and boldly, the depth of life present in every surface that we can notice if we only take the time to look. He wants to have generous space to record the color fully, to immerse the entire eye, body, and mind in color, unconstrained by limited inches. He wants to look as deeply as he can, into the wholeness rising up from the roots of the world.

Nature is more depth than surface, the colors are expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

–Paul Cézanne

During a figure drawing session, artists gather around a model, usually nude, who moves between various poses and holds them for varying amounts of time. Long poses of more than 20 minutes often have breaks, and poses can be very short, 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

London is a great city for figure drawing. I can find at least two or three sessions every day across the city, and life drawing modeling is a viable career, especially with the huge growth of online Zoom sessions since the pandemic.

Representational art genres are eternal. Landscapes, still lifes, portraits, figures, endlessly rediscovered in each generation since the beginning of art in the caves. I walk through the tube stations looking at advertisements, and I try to place each composition in a genre. Clothing ads are usually figures or portraits. Product ads are often still lifes, but sometimes figures as well. Landscapes are perhaps the rarest in advertising. Of course, photography is the most common medium for these genres now, followed by illustration. But their core concern is the same as it has always been—landscape, still life, people.

I’ve made portraits before, and many landscapes and still lifes. But this is the first time my attention is deeply focused on the bodies of my fellow humans (he said like an alien). And now I think it’s true what the past generations have said—the figure is the most challenging subject, and among the most instructive, and noble, to study.

I always believed that drawing was drawing. If you learned drawing skills, you could apply those skills to any subject from a landscape to an apple to a human face. As my teacher once said, “Subject matter doesn’t matter.” In many ways that’s true, there are core fundamentals that apply to all drawing and painting. If you have fundamentals, you don’t need specific tutorials or instruction to learn how to draw every potential subject on earth. “How to draw hands” and “how to draw heads” ends up in the same place. Learn the core drawing skills, and draw what you see directly. But, since creativity is a paradox, the opposite and contradicting point is also true. The subject does matter—the internal and external qualities of the subject matter, and the relationship between the artist’s mind and the subject also matters.

Everything depends on the attitude of the artist towards her subject. It is the one great essential.” –Robert Henri

Drawing something highly structural like a building requires a certain mindset and approach, compared to drawing something more organic and fluid, like foliage along a riverbank. When drawing structures, the mind and drawing approach becomes more structured, and when drawing moving, living organisms, the mind becomes more full of motion and fluidity. Of course, all rigid structures have some dynamic, organic qualities, and all living, organic things have static structure. There’s a matrix between a rock and a leaf in varying degrees of structure and movement. A rock just lives more slowly than the leaf. The rock is highly structural and slowly fluid. The leaf is moderately structural and highly fluid.

The human figure is highly structural and highly fluid at the same time. If you draw using only a structural mindset, the form will feel off, devoid of the vibrant, dynamic life we actually perceive when we see another human. But if you try to draw using only the fluid mindset, the form will appear fleeting, ghostlike, more like smoke than a person. Tiny inaccuracies in the structure of the figure stand out and pull the eye away from the overall form. So the human form requires the fullest range of artistic perception, skill, and mindset to be integrated, from deeply logical, careful, and structural, to deeply intuitive, fast, and fluid.

This range can be seen in the vast array of styles in figure drawing that have been made over centuries. Classicists emphasize the structural. Romantics emphasize the organic. Modernists emphasize neither—only symbol and concept through abstraction.

The figure is also highly complex and detailed. It’s packed with information and layered forms, and fine details that we’re especially tuned to notice and want to capture. We are keenly interested in the nuances of other humans’ body language and appearance. It’s a subject we begin our obsession with at birth, and never grow tired of. This is another challenge for the artist—trying to capture all the detail is a classic beginner mistake, and learning to simplify the forms is a core skill. With the limited time we have and the endless amount of interesting details we perceive, how do we learn to efficiently record our perceptions, accurately build the figure’s structure, and reflect the drama, wholeness, and aliveness of the human kind enough to model for us?

So, I’m exploring that question now. Drawing figures has already taught me many technical skills I’ve been able to apply to other genres like landscape and still life. And I’m eager to learn more about wholeness and creative skills along the way. I’m also brought into direct confrontation with my preconceptions and misconceptions about other people and our bodies. Drawing someone from life, I’m often overwhelmed by the depth of aliveness, complexity, intelligence, and intuition I perceive, and their generosity in being willing to model. As objectively I look at the human form as lines, shape, light, and shadow, there’s a gentle familiarity that comes from painting someone—you can get to know someone through their portrait, for sure.

I also talked about some of the common themes I usually write about on this newsletter—creativity, wholeness, and the timeless way of building. I hope you’ll join me over on YouTube, and please let me know if you have feedback on the videos so I can keep learning if I make more in the future.

The bench says, “I am a bench. You can sit here and I will support you, as I have countless times before. No one will disturb you here, this is your place to rest, if you want. I stand here in the wind and rain all day and night. I am a bench.”

The bench sat facing south toward the river and Hammersmith Bridge. The bridge was closed for repairs, only open to pedestrians. On either end, its columns stood on the rocky, sandy edges of the Thames. The columns were clad in “Victorian splendor”, tints of green and blue, ornamented with gold lines, fish scale motifs, and florid crowns, like a great serpent breaking the surface. A bright streak of metal highlighted the bridge’s shadowy belly from shore to shore, and lamps dotted the path along its spine.

Even in its resting state of repair, the bridge says, “I am a bridge. You can cross here, and I will support you, as I have for centuries. You can make your way swiftly across to reach your destination. I am a bridge, and I will be a bridge longer than all who cross me will live.”

At the Victoria & Albert museum, I saw a door. It hung on the wall, its timber panels breathing in the patchwork sun. A skeletal frame wrapped around the central opening, a skull-like structure supporting the threshold of the wooden jaw, four square windows above for a nose. And inside the membrane of the main panels, a smaller door, maybe for everyday use, or for children. Two beams emerged from the top, creating a reaching embrace, inviting you to approach. At the bottom threshold, a single beam curved not from weight but from the wear of endless feet crossing to an interior. And finally two floral carvings, subtle and almost faded with time, lend a hint of softness and home within the strong exterior.

The door says, “I am a door. I am in my twilight, and you cannot pass through here. But I am a door still. I am here to be an example of what life can be. Please make more doors like me—strong, warm, and alive.”

I forget how strong a center can be. How proudly a bench can be a bench, a bridge can be a bridge, a door can be a door. The depth and commitment to doing what we can with what we have, to make something that lives for as long as it can. It’s refreshing to meet the Quality Without a Name.

Welcome! This is part four in a mini newsletter series about my outdoor painting season this year. It's also a newsletter about creativity. I'm Kevin. Thanks for stopping by. Would you like some peppers from the garden?

When I paint in the park, people often stop to chat or get a closer look. The most common thing I hear is, "I wish I could do that." My response is, "You could. We're here every week. Come back next Tuesday. Bring paint."

I wish I could do that. I think there's a message hidden in that statement and how frequently I hear it. It's not, "I want that." It's, "I want to do that." Or maybe, "I want to do something like that." I'm not sure everyone specifically wants to paint outside or make paintings in general, although probably many would enjoy it. I think there's a nameless quality that people sense in the scene—the quiet light, the careful attention, the smell of the paint—a degree of life, freedom, and wholeness that people find enchanting.

I could let this public view stop me from painting outside. I might not want someone to see my unfinished sketches and worry about what they might think. But I go anyway, for myself. Painting outside is too much fun. And, I see painting, or practicing any creativity, in public as a contribution. For some passers-by, it might be a timely reminder of something important, or the encouragement needed to ask important questions. It might be a reminder that they "want to do something like that."

It's a gentle reminder that it might be possible to take a couple hours a week to practice creativity. It's a reminder that creativity itself is a learnable skill, not exclusively a matter of talent. It may take time and resources, but it can be a mundane part of everyday life rather than magical and rare (although it's that, too). It's an encouragement that you could do something like this, in small ways and small steps, and it would be wonderful if you joined us. It provides a real experience of other ways life can be. If nothing else, it makes the neighborhood more lively and interesting.

Yesterday I cut into a pepper from the farmers' market. When I did, water poured from inside, spilling over the kitchen counters and the floor. It was juicy, vibrant, joyous—unlike any pepper I had eaten before. I didn't know peppers could be this fresh and alive. It was a reminder of what life can be.

Ahoy! Please come in—welcome to The Pattern Workshop, a newsletter about creativity. I'm Kevin McGillivray, and this is part three of a mini-series of posts about my outdoor oil painting season this summer. Today I'm inside the studio, taking a break from the heat, and pondering experiments...

I wish museums were filled with GIFs. I want to see the final painting next to a montage of images of it being made. The painting at twenty minutes, then two hours, then six hours. The painting in its final state is beautiful, whole, and complete—but the attempts to find the truth in it are often more interesting.

At the end of every painting session, I take a photo of the in-progress painting, like canvas version control. When these pictures are connected, it looks like a video—like a camera lens coming into focus and subtly shifting around the subject. The painting isn't static—it's dynamic, it has a lifetime and a changing form like all living things.

Looking at these sequences, I notice wholeness. Painting from life is like slowing down the first moment you open your eyes and stretching it out over hours. I don't perceive one leaf at a time, I see the entire field of vision as a whole. Then details and parts become differentiated with extended attention and time.

I think it's important to paint (or to make anything) the way our senses make sense of the world. If we want what we make to have a degree of life, or the Quality Without a Name, I think it's helpful to start with wholeness, maintain wholeness, and develop the whole together. I can't start a landscape with one blade of grass or leaf at continue from there—it starts with the whole and it continues growing as a whole until it's on the wall in a frame.

Speaking of walls and frames... I've gotten some questions about how it might be possible to buy paintings. I'd really like to find a way to do this! If you're interested in a painting or two, would you please enter your email over on this page (or reply to this newsletter)?

I know, another newsletter signup! But it's a way for me to keep track of folks who are interested so I don't fill the main newsletter with too many updates. I'd like to experiment—there may be a traditional page with paintings listed for sale, or maybe something that looks like an "art CSA" box, or maybe one of those mysterious NFTs everyone is talking about. We'll see! The paintings are piling up and in need of good homes.

More words soon,

KM

Welcome to The Pattern Workshop, a newsletter about creativity. I'm your host, Kevin McGillivray. This is part two of a new season (read part 1 here), telling the tales of my outdoor painting sessions this summer in real time. Let's begin, while we still have the light...

The light has changed. The sun is hazy. It's like wandering in a dream or the feywilds. As I walk over to my painting spot, I wonder how different the scene will be. I wonder if I should be wearing a mask, and if I'll ever see another summer without smoke.

Frank and John have moved to new spots. Maybe to account for the change in light. Frank says, "Hey, hey... howdy, howdy..." as I set up my easel and scan the scene. It's a different place than it was last week. The haze took the color from the grass and gave it to the trees.

By the time I'm ready the light has changed again. Closer to what it was last time but... still skewed. Is this where I was standing? Now I have to start. The hard part. Quickly now.

After rain, the primary concern is light. Am I standing in the sun or the shade? How cloudy is it? Where is the sun in the sky when I start? Where will it be when I end? Is it similar to last time? Is it too different than last time? Why is that shadow a different shape than it was last week at this exact same time? You get familiar with the orientation and moods of the celestial spheres with more nuance than normal. Like wine tasting compared to grabbing a bottle from the rack.

The painters often greet each other by discussing the light. "Wow, the light is so different today," or "The light keeps changing today." It sets our pace. We chase it as it fades, we rush to act when it shifts back into place. It determines when to start and stop. We're standing in one place, but we're chasing the light. As the sun sets, we say, "I lost the light."

I don't always come back to a painting more than once. Sometimes I stop after one session, as a sketch. But if I can, I come back three or four times. When you come back to a painting and see it in a different light, it feels like what we mean when we say we see a person "in a different light." For better or worse, a new facet of the subject is revealed when seen in a different context but the same angle.

There are lessons about creativity here. It feels that stating them directly would be too harsh for today. Something about how art happens in the space between yourself and the light, in a place in-between subject and object, where both and neither exist. Something about how we do what we can with the time we have before the light changes. But that's for another day. Or maybe it's better understood by looking at paintings.

For now, the AQI is high and we have a smoke forecast every day. People keep talking about how beautiful the sunsets are in the haze. The light has changed. And I’m painting it.

This post is also available on my website.

*Waves* It's me: Kevin McGillivray. And this: the Pattern Workshop newsletter (working and re-working title). Welcome to a new season. Maybe you didn't know this newsletter had seasons. Neither did I! We sure are learning a lot together.

Let's look back at the first season.

Posts: 14
Subscribers: 49 (thank you all for hanging out with me)
Topics: creativity, and what it's like to practice it

What's ahead? That's what I want to talk about today... seasons and fresh starts. Let's watch the trailer.

On a Tuesday in July, a scene emerges in the park by the river: one by one, painters arrive with wooden easels and bug spray. They gather like geese reuniting to fly south, greeting and then spreading out to find suitable posts.

The park itself enables these events. A public green nestled near the lock, with hills, paths, trees old and young, people old and young. Playgrounds, fishing spots, river trails and cafés. All these conspire to make a place where painters might appear.

Passers-by stop and look, and the painters make conversation about dogs, rain, and the mysteries of electric bikes. Rare moments that feel like community form around the scene. Everyone leaves feeling more at rest.

This is outdoor painting season for our group. No, you won't see us outside during the Wisconsin winter. Winter is for portraits and still lives in the studio. Summer and Fall are for being out-of-doors, where life is. We go where life goes, we appear when life emerges, we move along the way life does.

In online neighborhoods these seasons aren't so clear. There are no snowy months on the Internet. It clicks along constantly, and we feel compelled to keep up to exist. No posts, no you. No comments, no relationships. That's an issue for another day—how do we create online places that accept quiet presence as a contribution?

In the meantime, I want to try something in this blog-ish newsletter space to embrace seasonality. As much as we might hope for absolute consistency, I'm not sure that's ideal, for the same reasons we don't paint outside in winter. Plus, Robin Sloan says it's a good idea.

A personal email newsletter ought to be divided into seasons, just like a TV show.

So, this is the first post in a series, a new season. It's not so different from what you may have read here before. These posts will be about what this newsletter has always been about: practicing creativity. But I want to give it a light structure with a beginning, a middle, and end. Because, after all, creativity often moves in seasons.

To do that, it will line up with my outdoor painting schedule for the year. It starts now and ends when it's too blustery and dark to paint in the evenings at the park. I'm not sure how many posts there will be. Depends on how long the weather lasts and how often it rains. But it will have an "ending," at least for this season. And then we'll see what's next.

I'm not sure where we'll end up—new framed canvases? Piles of unfinished pictures? New discoveries on the nature and mysteries of creativity? Hopefully all of the above. This isn't like watching a produced TV season—there is no plan or script, we'll figure this out as we go, and I'm grateful you're along for the journey.

I'll share updates about what's on the canvas and other projects, a la weeknotes (another Robin Sloan tip), along with reflections about what I'm learning about creativity as I go. And I'll share the meta-notes from behind the scenes about where I think all this writing and wandering about creativity is going, and what might be ahead in future seasons.

Things I may be working on this season and sharing updates about:

• Painting at the park

• An updated website for paintings and related writing

• Writing on Practicing Creativity toward a draft book version

• Dismantling, repairing, renovating this online home (my website and this newsletter) to better support seasonal cycles

• Self-publishing a chapbook about vegetables that's been sitting on my hard drive for a few years

• Laying foundations for an online membership program that could grow to support more efforts like these in the future (???)

I have more to say and share, but I'll leave this meta post where it is and write to you again sooner than later. Heading to the park again this Tuesday. Hope to see you there, online or off.

Leave a comment

This post is also available on my website.

When I paint at the local park, there’s been a common question people ask as they wander by and see the in-progress canvas: “Is it done?”

It’s not such an easy question to answer. It could be done. It might not be. I don’t know the answer any more than they do. Usually my answer is “maybe, we’ll see.” If the brush keeps moving in the next few moments, then no, it’s not done. If the sun starts to set and the light changes too much, but I come back the next day or the next week to keep painting, then no, it’s not done. If I look at the canvas and at the subject and look for areas of imbalance or unsteadiness, and I don’t find any, and I feel a sense of rest and wholeness, then maybe it’s done and it’s time to sign it.

The painting could be done at any moment. When I paint, I go in with a strategy. I want to develop the entire picture as a whole, bringing the entire canvas through a sequence of stages of development. The first stage is a sketch, of course, rough, fuzzy, and inaccurate. With each cycle, the image becomes clearer and more specific as adjustments are made and relationships are established. It’s not developed one section at a time but all sections at once, quickly moving around the whole canvas. Following this strategy, the picture is always in a state of wholeness and completeness even if it’s rough and fuzzy. Each cycle maintains this whole and preserves its unity—what Christopher Alexander called “structure-preserving transformations.”

In fact, a certain degree of roughness is a requirement for wholeness. Developing one area of the canvas much more than the rest will create an imbalance, a disunity and partitioning of the whole into distinctly separate parts out of communication with each other. Even adding too much detail overall can lead to a surreal sense of unrelation, where boundaries are stated too strongly to hold together as a whole.

And so, the painting could be done at many different moments, with varying degrees of roughness. Always complete, always whole, but… then how can you tell when it’s “done” and time to sign it? Well, first, there’s the budget. When painting outside, there’s only so much time in a day and a limit to my energy. Eventually the sun will set or shift direction too much, and the scene becomes a different picture entirely than the one I started with. So, times up, time to move on. Maybe I’ll go back the next day or the next week and continue, give myself another swathe of time to paint with. But even then, eventually the season changes, and beyond that, everyone has an ultimate limit on the time available to them. We might not know how much time will be available when we start painting, so we develop the whole together, so that it’s complete no matter when it’s time to move on.

Second, there’s the sense of equilibrium. This is a sense that the painter develops the more they paint—a sense of how the forces at play within the subject and the painting and themselves are relating to each other and hold each other together no matter how energetic or powerful they might be. The eye moves around the image, and back and forth to the subject, and checks for areas of getting stuck, areas where the movement stalls or changes too quickly. If it doesn’t get stuck, if no particular center gives a hint of being out of relation to the rest or underdeveloped, it might be done. When the mind and the painting are at rest, the eye roams freely and dynamically, each visual pathway and center leading into each other, each center matching the level of development of each other center, supporting each other as a whole. It feels as though no single point is underdeveloped, and as though developing any single point further would only reduce wholeness. This might sound like intuition, but I don’t think it is—it can be experienced directly in the senses.

And so, the painting is done when the mind, the eye, and the picture are at rest with each other, when the forces at play move freely within the whole and resolve each other. And, it’s done when the sun sets and the season changes, and it’s time to move along the way life moves.

Wreck. It's a harsh word with harsh connotations. Destroyed, unsalvagable, spoiled completely, destined for the trash pile. Broken up, shattered, irreparable. A ruinous mistake. It brings up images of someone sadly throwing their broken pottery in the bin.

Worrying about whether or not you're going to "wreck" something will stop you in your tracks, or stop you from ever starting. The first secret is: you will wreck it in the process of developing it. Creativity is messy—ask anyone who has renovated a kitchen. As you get one part in order, other parts fall into disarray as a side effect, and its your job to balance all of the shifting forces. It’s a risk every time you pick up the hammer or brush. Yes, a mistake might happen. Yes, something might fall apart that was previously holding together as a whole. Yes, two steps forward in one area might cause a step backward in another.

However, the second secret is: most things are more repairable and more malleable than we assume. In most creative processes, there are ways of working in which “mistakes” aren’t a permanent end and can be reworked at each step. In a creative process, everything is in flux all the time, sometimes moving toward stability and sometimes moving toward instability, but these states aren’t permanent. The biggest mistake is holding yourself back from taking the next step your intuition tells you is necessary to develop the whole out of fear of destabilizing other areas.

And, the things we make aren’t quite as precious as we assume. The real precious thing is our ability to keep making more and keep reshaping and repairing what is already there. Each crafted object might be a one-of-a-kind special thing, but it deserves your dedication to its dynamically emerging life rather than its static preservation.

Rather than seeing items as precious, irreplacable, and potentially ruined by the smallest imperfection, see them as malleable, abundantly renewable, repairable, more alive as a result of their candid roughness (Wholeness includes roughness). Acknowledge your ability to bring the damaged and unstable back into stability and wholeness—that's what creativity is. In the middle of creative shaping, there is the potential to bring everything back into harmony, and there’s plenty of time and material for you to work with. Nothing is ruinable. Nothing is irrepairable. Nothing is permanent. It's not as serious as that. So, get in there and wreck it.

You don't have to worry about wrecking it.

You want to avoid not doing something because you think it will wreck something else.

You can't wreck this. Let's get it going. Right now, today.

–Things John Gordon says while we're painting

Also, please enjoy this five minutes of things being slowly smushed:

This post is adapted from my draft notes on Practicing Creativity.

How lightly do we touch the surface? I feel as though I could reach out and press my finger against the stillness of my own vision, and it would ripple out like a suddenly alive thing. Most days there's a thin boundary between me and the world. I get used to this, and think that's life. I can see, I can hear—what more is there? But every so often I brush against the edges of life and it shimmers and I think, "Oh... what's in there?" And if I am curious, I wonder what would happen if I touch it again. Maybe I put my toe in, and then my arm. And if I am brave, sometimes I hold my breath and dip my head inside, and if I am especially courageous I submerge myself and open my eyes and my ears, and what do my senses touch then?

In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of—moments when we human beings can say “I love you,” “I'm proud of you,” “I forgive you,” “I'm grateful for you.” That's what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff.

–Fred Rogers

Well, nothing but imperishable good stuff. What I thought was clear now seems blurry, what I thought was bright now seems dim—salty sweet watermelon salad, the first warm cool breeze of spring, the laughter of the old people and the young people, the dark fragrance of the garden dirt—I am pulled outside of myself and into the world itself and the world within me, to the only place where things are ever really real.

And yet it startles me, I don't know how long I can stay there. I can only hold my breath so long, and I fear losing touch with myself in the wild, animated world. And so I emerge, and touch lightly again, and dream of the depths.

Nature is more depth than surface, the colors are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

–Paul Cézanne

There’s a big difference between seeing a painting once and having it on your wall, in your room, hanging out with you every day. And yet another difference between seeing a painting in a photograph in a book or on a screen and seeing it in person. I remember when my parents took me to see Starry Night when I was a kid, and I walked away thinking, “That was more of a sculpture than a painting.” It was practically three dimensional compared to my primary visual experience at the time, which was a Game Boy screen.

When I say I look at it every day, what I really mean is I happen to see it every day. Or maybe even more accurately, it is seen every day, in the passive voice. It’s not an active looking or observing or studying or thinking. It’s not like going to the museum, standing across from the frame and canvas in what one of my art teachers called the “art stance” (you’d recognize it—leaning to one side, one arm crossed, the other on the chin, a slight furrow in the brow, ready to utter a “hmmm” or an “ah” at any moment) and pondering the history, context, techniques, and the artist’s meaning or message of the painting. Reading the little card with the title, the year, and an interesting fact.

No, it’s more like the thing my eyes rest on whenever my mind wanders off in contemplation. The painting is an object of contemplation. It doesn’t require direct, focused attention, and it doesn’t expect action or useful purpose. It is a place for passive, leisurely perception of things as they are. It is infused within and expands the scope of our perceptions through a background low simmering presence, day after day.

Yes, it’s a decoration, an ornamentation that makes the room it’s in more alive, more whole. It’s a beacon of the Quality Without a Name, a passage of wholeness that encourages wholeness in us—a reminder of what can be. That is its usefulness—its consistent, quiet yet alive presence. There is a living relationship between the painter, the painting, and the people who hang the painting on their walls. The painter’s careful and spontaneous observations and recording of their perceptions, embedded on the canvas, now encourage us to carry on with the same care and liveliness. Someone, somewhere took whatever time they had to create this picture, and it’s an invitation to us to join them in sensitive openness to our lives.

And what of museums? The houses of public art? Well, the answer is clear—go frequently. The first visit to a museum, it’s like visiting a new city. You go in with a plan. Maybe you go in open minded, but also with some questions and some goals. There may be specific special exhibits or permanent collections you want to explore. It’s a bit like an in real life social media feed, an all-you-can-see feast of visual appetite. Once we get visually fatigued, it's easy to start walking through a museum the way mindless scrolling happens. It might be best to limit visual activity in the couple days leading up to a museum visit, to not wear yourself out before you get there.

The second, third, or fiftieth time, the pressure of the first visit is lifted. You might find yourself willing to wander a bit more, with no plan at all. Or, you might find yourself revisiting favorite pictures like old friends—paintings you’ve seen a dozen times, but never tire of returning to. And you might find yourself noticing something in a picture you’ve seen many times but never quite caught on to before. It catches your eye, and a detail is revealed that could only come with multiple passes, like suddenly noticing an interesting building in your neighborhood you never even noticed before in your daily routine. Whatever may happen, the visit to a museum becomes a ritual, a routine, rather than a mission to complete.

If you’ve spent much time in this virtual workshop, with its dusty shelves and un-dusty workbenches smooth with the shine of frequent wear, you’ve probably noticed a scattering of half-finished paintings and websites around my corner of the shop. I’m wondering what paintings as an object of contemplation, as a quiet background presence, would look like on a website. Websites are all about active looking, browsing, searching. Where’s the place for resting the wandering mind on the texture of a brush stroke? Where are the online galleries we return to again and again like familiar museum halls? I’m not sure, but I hope to experiment with web-places like that. Until then, my feet are headed to the museum… and I leave you with a request: please, show me the art on your walls!

I seek the doors of museums compulsively, to be close to the marble and the canvas, the way I seek quiet solitude at the end of a long day.

The Length of Humanity