Notes on Painting

1. A painting is a place.

2. A painting is a visual translation of sensation.

3. A painting is a site of connection; an object which transmits touch and emotion from one person to another.

4. Aesthetic experiences can dislodge us from the everyday and cause us to feel less alone. A painting is an object that holds the opportunity for common ground.

5. Painting is a way to trap and hold energy.

6. Landscape paintings emphasize the fact that walls separate us from nature. Hanging pictures of the outdoors on walls creates a vista that expands interior space. A landscape painting is a visual bridge to the natural world.

7. As a handmade simulation of the environment, landscape paintings offer respite, escape and an opportunity to sit, look and contemplate.

8. A painting holds the doubt and perseverance of the creative process.

9. Paintings ask questions.

10. The artist's purview is contained within the edges of a painting.

11. A painting is a physical manifestation of both the visible and the invisible.

12. Painting is an enactment of freedom, denial, escape and pleasure.

13. Painting is an enactment of uncertainty and deep focus.

14. Painting is an act of hope because it is an act of imagination.

15. Painting is humanistic and as such is concerned with emotion.

16. Painting is an enactment of domestic activity.

17. Paintings are mediated experiences that heighten consciousness.

18. Painting, (a painting), is a way to expand the boundaries of reality.

19. A painting is an object that functions as a window, a decoration and as a thing that can transform one’s surroundings and psychological state.

20. The repetitious activity of painting patterns mirrors the experience of domestic time — a continuous and repetitive cycle.

21. Painting is a way to think and a place to put the mind.

22. Paintings make time, space and light visible. To paint is to solve spatial problems on a two dimensional surface.

23. Painters turn their back on the world to make sense of experience.

24. A painting is an object of contemplation and agitation.

25. Paintings make social and political discourse visible.

26. A painting is a way to record information and put forth a critique.

27. Painting involves slowness.

28. Making a painting is a powerful political act. (Not a new idea but one that is relevant for me as an artist, an educator, a woman and a mother at this point in my experience of American history).

29. I paint everyday and daily life is at the heart of my content.

30. A painting reflects, defines and reimagines history.

31. Paintings are artifacts of experience.

32. Looking at a painting is an experience of conscious and unconscious time.

33. Paintings are places where many kinds of time overlap.

34. One enters a painting.

35. Paintings that have a sentimental quality are not concerned with strong emotions. Sentimentality neutralizes emotion.

36. Paintings that have a nostalgic quality are concerned with trauma.

37. In a post-studio, post-disciplinary, post-human, media-saturated landscape, paintings contain ancient and contemporary time.

38. A painting is an object that makes process visible.

39. A painting is a mirror.