Awareness

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In meditation, they say that the monkey-mind wanders, and when you find it wandering, bring it back to the breath, or the body sensations, or whatever your attention needs to come back to. That the act of bringing back your mind to meditation, and not letting it be dragged by thoughts and the wandering mind, IS the meditation. Similarly, many times, I start a watercolor, and simply dip my paintbrush into the next color, then the next, a stroke here, and a stroke there - more instinctively - without a true awareness of what I am doing. I wonder how it would be different if I was truly aware - if I truly looked at the painting in progress to see what it needs, and with awareness, fulfilled that need. If I had a reason for choosing that blue-green - instinct is fine, but I should be able to back it up with a reason if someone asked - is it a complementary color to the one next to it, is it warm next to a cool? - what if I mentally verbalized why I was doing what I was doing, to tell myself, to justify my next action. Would it be a better painting, with all that awareness and thought, than something more haphazard? Would the slight pauses to center my mind, make it more aware of what I am about to do, allow for better planning, better justification of all the decisions taken in the course of a painting?

These floral studies are from a picture I took recently. I like the top right green artichoke element in the top painting, and the middle orange flower with the suggestion of the green bud under it from the second painting. It's because the shapes are right, AND the values get to real darks.


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