Sometimes the body knows before the eyes do.
Something has changed. I can sense it without
yet being able to say what has shifted.
Attention comes afterwards. It searches for the source of the
difference.
Monozygotic twins have two faces that
appear identical. Yet my body knows
that they are not. I sense a difference
before I can pinpoint it. The sensation comes
first. Observation gives it a direction. I
look for an eyebrow, a tilt, a crease, a
way of holding the mouth. Little by little, what
my body had sensed finds a point of reference. The
difference becomes pinpointable. Yet it was already there
long before I knew where to look.
When drawing, the same thing happens to me.
Two drawings may seem identical. In
one, I make the green slightly brighter.
Almost nothing. At first glance, I don’t know what
has changed. Yet the whole is already no longer
the same. Something has shifted in
the balance of the drawing.
I sense it before I can pinpoint it.
I observe. My attention seeks a point of reference. It
scans the lines, the colour relationships, the
intensities. Then it finds that green, which is barely more
vibrant. An almost imperceptible change
has transformed the whole.
My intuition had sensed the difference. Observation then
pinpoints its location.
It was nature that taught me this.
I often walk along the same path.
The trees seem the same.
So does the sky.
Yet nothing is exactly the same as before.
The light has already changed, and so
have the colours.
Some days, I sense this change before
I see it. The path is there, the trees too, and yet
something no longer fits. I
don’t yet know whether it comes from the light, the air,
a shadow or a colour that has become more
dense. I only know that it is no longer quite
the same place.
I observe.
The drawing begins in that interval between a
felt difference and an identified difference.
I search with my eyes for what my body has already
registered.
I shift an intensity, a nuance, a
line, a rhythm.
Sometimes almost nothing.
And that almost nothing transforms everything.
What changes does not need to be
immediately visible to have an effect. A tiny difference
can alter the whole even before
I can pinpoint it. The gaze eventually
finds what the sensation had already encountered.
Drawing allows me to remain in that space.
Not to name things too quickly. I observe until
the difference finds its place.
Beneath it, the variations work in silence.
They often begin before the eye perceives them.
