Every now & then, as I’m leaving the gallery where I teach on Saturdays, I take a short detour downstairs to spend a few minutes in front of what I refer to as “my wall.” This is the spot where, at any given time over the past 10-plus years, a half-dozen or so of my most recent paintings & drawings are being displayed. Which is not to say that this is all necessarily recent work, mind you. It’s just my most recent work for, due to its nature (highly-detailed), my creative process (painstaking) & everyday life (multi-directional), I am far from prolific.
Even so, over the last decade, this wall has been the backdrop for an ample succession of my original work & I have the stack of consignment forms to prove it: Graphite lotuses & pastel pears; crashing waves & tranquil harbors; blossoms in situ or in vases; a village street, a country road; portraits of things instead of people – a gargoyle, a rowboat, a 100-year-old barn. All have occupied a time-share on this wall.
I’d like to think I visit my gallery paintings because I miss them. In truth, I do it because I want to see if my perception of them has changed with time & psychological distance. You see, as an art instructor, I’m very familiar with the phenomenon of changing perception. Here’s how it works:
A student experiences difficulty with a painting or drawing & finishes class feeling frustrated & disappointed with her efforts. A week goes by. She returns to class with varying degrees of dread, enters the studio, gazes at her project in amazement… & – only half-jokingly – accuses me of having worked on it in the intervening week. After pointing out – gently but firmly – the absurdity of such a notion, I explain to her the phenomenon of changing visual perceptions, a sort of “forest/trees” thing: Time & distance alter our perception of our own work, usually for the better but, unfortunately, sometimes for the worse.
And so it is really my curiosity which drives me periodically, late on a Saturday afternoon after everyone else has left, to enter the gallery by the back door & stand before my wall. Like an anxious child searching a parent’s face, I scrutinize each painting to reassure myself that all is still well or, conversely, to see if old disappointments have been erased with time.
The outcome of all of this is a sort of “good news/bad news” thing: The paintings that have always pleased me, still do & the ones that have never entirely pleased me, still don’t. No, the phenomenon of changing perceptions apparently has a statute of limitations and it has now expired. I realize that my ritual detour has devolved into a sort of “magical thinking” thing.
It’s time to leave the gallery, get into my car & go home.