To look at art is to apprehend the finished product, the art object; and one will decide if they are moved by it or not. Perhaps more interesting is what is hidden behind the appearance. What has the artist been doing? What is their project? To be sure, the work itself may be the best indication of this, and yet, I love to know what an artist believes about their journey, what they seek. What does the process of discovery seem like?

I would offer that a sincere creative process is akin to that of the classic explorer. Both know to anticipate the mystery to be found in open-ended experimentation and refinement. With proper tenacity and wonder both will find themselves in uncharted territory and this is the point! If the explorer or the artist goes far enough in a direction eventually they’re traveling alone, seeing alone, and the work an artist makes from such place is a kind of reporting-out to the rest of us.

The path of discovery I find myself on now, as an older man, is different from what I’d expected—turning away from the cerebral toward the tangible, toward what seems to lie beneath compulsive thought and language. Dance as compared to poetry. I ask myself why the work has taken the turns it has, but amazingly the artist doesn’t need to know why. In fact, the question likely gets in the way by dragging the familiar into the undiscovered and tainting it in that way. Best to travel on and witness, not scheme. In this way I’m lucky to have found painting, it doesn’t require discursive thought, exactly. In that spirit I’ll say just this much: I invite you to let the art work carry you to the work’s project, not by evaluating it as much as entering it.