Where Color Unravels Between Conscious and Unseen
There are moments in the studio when I no longer know exactly where I stand.
My eyes are fixed on the canvas. My hand is holding the brush. Yet I cannot clearly tell whether it is “I” who is deciding.
I call this place the space between consciousness and the unseen. Today, I would like to speak quietly about that subtle threshold.
Thinking, Yet Not Thinking
At the beginning of a painting, everything is deliberate. I consider which color to place, where to leave untouched, how far to layer. Experience and structure guide each movement.
But after a certain point, thought softens. Words in my mind begin to thin out. What remains is a sensation—an inner nod that says, “here.”
I am deciding, yet I am not explaining. The brush moves before language forms. Consciousness has not disappeared; it has simply stepped aside.
The Unseen Is Accumulated Time
The unconscious is often described as something mystical. For me, it is accumulation. Music once heard. Books once opened. Light once observed.
A quiet line of Bach. The suspended breath of Miles Davis. A fragment of literature from years ago.
They do not appear as memories during painting. Yet they surface in the angle of a stroke, in the restraint of a color. Nothing is accidental. It is sediment.
Standing on the Threshold
Neither pure control nor pure surrender is enough. Consciousness prevents excess. The unseen opens what is too rigid.
To paint is to stand between them—one foot in clarity, the other in ambiguity. In that balance, something begins to breathe.
The Courage to Release Control
I do not wish to understand everything in my work. A trace that cannot be fully explained leaves room for the viewer’s time to enter.
The space between awareness and instinct is not incompletion. It is an opening.
Today again, I stand in that quiet threshold, layering color.