to those who look

Jun 06, 2023

To the ones that wander far and wide from familiar places to unfamiliar.

From their comfort. Into discomfort.

The connection between our feet and our eyes is marvelously understated. There is a rope with slack that travels up your spine and through the front of your face, splaying itself into your eyeballs.

Do we see with our eyes, or do we see with our feet? Without the destination that our feet bring us to, our eyes would not be too familiar with the idea of looking. Without our eyes, however, our feet would not be able to bring us to another point of interest. Perhaps we see with both… perhaps our eyes and our feet work in continuity with one another to see the world in our very particular ways.

What about the curiosity that drives our feet to move and then subsequently see with our eyes? What does it mean to see?

In my last public display of art as an undergraduate at the University of Denver, I put my largest oil painting to date on two easels in the middle of campus on a still, autumn afternoon. The leaves were whirring down from trees smearing the walkways and accompanying students to their next class. I perched myself in a chair a distance far enough away where I seemed unaffiliated with the work where my camera sat above me recording. We both watched.

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I felt like I was emulating Mark Rothko. He was known to silently follow patrons at his exhibitions and eavesdrop on their conversations as they positioned themselves in front of his paintings. However, I was more interested in the act of looking and less interested in what people had to say about the work.

I sat there and I watched, and I watched… people occasionally would lift their heads from their phone screens and have a glance and keep walking. Others would stop and look for a short bit, and some would neglect its entire existence. Then there were those that looked. My lowercase, cursive signature sits at the bottom right corner of the painting being the only identifiable aspect and even then, you could hardly see it amongst the hundreds of gestures it resided on.

I learned so much about people that day. It gave me information about life that I have been continually going back to. That project imbued an overwhelming drive to create work through the notion of extreme presence. Or better yet, work that can only be experienced through intentional and engaged acts of presence and looking.

To those who look is the catalyst to a new movement, a new focus, within my art practice. As I look to the grey areas and the ambiguity of daily life, our routines, and our habits, where we look and where we do not look, I ask you to find moments to look. When you sit at a red light or when you sit outside waiting for a friend… attempt to engage with your surroundings in a new way. Ask yourself questions that there are probably no answers to. Call a phone number you see written on a sign on the street… you never know what it might lead to.

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