Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve forgotten how to paint? It happens to me regularly. I think it has to do with the way I am seeing. That is, if I cannot transition from my ordinary way of perception to one where I am moved in some visual sense, I go through the motions of painting but nothing happens. The problem is that the transition itself is subtle. So when my mind is caught up in other things, I forget to feel the transitioning process. There ought to be a built-in Siri-type thing attached to my easel that says, once I’ve started painting, “You feeling anything yet?”

What the problem boils down to, however, is not that I’ve forgotten how to paint. Rather, it is that I’ve forgotten that a noticeable shift in moods is required before I can move from copying what I see to not actually seeing the thing before me so that the myriad collection of fresh, wonderful sensations can propel me well past the task of making a dumb old picture.

Case in point is my current attempt to paint along a lakeside promenade in Bellagio as shown above. There were numerous hurdles to get over before I could settle into a sublime mood. For one, the painting is large (36 x 52 inches) and horizontal, which made looking around it and comparing my field of vision to what I was doing on the canvas a bit of a challenge. Then gardeners showed up one day and changed the yellow flowers to red ones. On another day gardeners parked their trucks here and there and forced me to move my easel quite a distance from where I had started. The weather didn’t cooperate for about ten days and at that point I had to go to England for a week and upon my return the darn trees sprouted white and pink flowers. If that were not enough, various benches were moved and along with them the people seated upon them. Sigh! But all that comes with painting out of doors in a crowded area.

But here is the most serious factor: I wasn’t squinting hard enough. Amid all the chaos it is easy to begin looking at parts of the subject matter and not the mass of sensations as a whole that might then offer up something that would excite me as a visual artist.

For example, in the photo below, if I allow my eyes to wander about the elements of my subject, I might notice (wrongly as we shall see) that the base of the grass and yellow flowers is significantly darker than the pavement (see arrow No.1). Likewise, the mountains appear to be quite darker than the sky (see arrow No.2)

If I were to paint one element after another, even if I moved from dark to light carefully, I would never be able to exit into that mood of wonder where I might have a shot at injecting a life into the canvas. I would be trapped at the level of a technician without realizing it. At best, the painting would be correct but dead on arrival.

Now, if I squint way down, look what happens (see below). It becomes impossible to see individual separate parts because I can’t focus. Now I see a whole to which I am able to respond as a visual artist, as opposed to a person who simply makes copies of things in oil.

When I take the next step and eliminate color (hard to do in one’s head, I know), I begin to see “not the thing before me” but rather masses of three values (darks, middles, and lights) that I can work with. “Where do you want to go,” I silently ask the sensations confronting me? And notice those areas that I had previously pointed to as relatively dark (compared to their neighboring areas). They almost disappear. Had I simply moved around my subject, without squinting, I would have painted a collection of unrelated things. Again, dead on arrival.

Forgetting how to paint, at least for me, is forgetting about the need – no, change that – about the imperative to “get past the facts.” Squinting (and then comparing) is likewise an imperative. It helps us to see things just in terms of line and color. It enables us to simplify. And thus it provides a way of exiting our normal modes of perception and entering into a mood where our sense of presence is heightened, where we are able to see and feel a dimension of sensuality that had been, prior to that moment, invisible.

Here’s the final painting: A Mood of Liveliness, 36 x 52.