Home   >   Community   >   Stepping back

Stepping back

By on March 30, 2009

When I lived in New York City years ago, I worked in a music studio at Brooklyn College, creating new kinds of music. But whenever I had the chance, I would go to the museums to look at art for inspiration and ideas. New York has great art collections.

 

So, if I was working in music, why didn’t I go to concerts? Why would I look at paintings for music ideas? 

 

Good questions! It has something to do with “Stepping Back.” That’s not a dance move. It just means getting some distance from whatever you’re working on. It means trying to see things from a different perspective, so that you may see something you didn’t see before.

 

One time my buddy Nathaniel, a fine saxophone player from Seattle, was visiting New York. At the Museum of Modern Art, we viewed the work of the famous French Impressionist artist, Claude Monet. Back then, a single room was dedicated to Monet’s large painting of water lilies. The painting surrounded us, with different panels on different walls.

 

We walked around the room, viewing the painting’s interesting surfaces. The brushstrokes were loose, almost wild, as if Monet were having fun slathering paints on these big canvases. It wasn’t a typical landscape painting—no fields or hills, trees, or even a horizon. It just seemed like beautiful splashes of color that didn’t really form much of a pattern or picture. Neither of us said much. We liked it just fine, but maybe didn’t quite know what to make of Monet’s work. So we proceeded to leave the water lilies room to explore what else there was to see.

 

Spontaneously, we stopped at the room’s exit for one last glance at the painting, and both let out a loud “Wow!” At that moment, I knew Nathaniel was seeing what I was seeing – something very different from what we were looking at moments before. Suddenly, it was a scene bathed in sunlight—chalky dried oil paint had become shimmering wet, a beautiful pond reflecting sky and clouds on its surface.

 

So what changed? I don’t think Monet sneaked into the room and repainted it while our backs were turned. I’m pretty sure museums don’t allow that. Since the painting was the same, something must have changed within us. Is that possible? Yes. Things are changing within people all the time. And with those changes, things can actually look different!

 

Sometimes those changes happen mysteriously. Often, they can result from simple things. At the museum, we saw the painting differently after we had briefly looked away, so maybe a fresh look helps. Also, we were looking from a different distance, so maybe each perspective has something new to teach.

 

I wonder how many problems in life might be solved by a simple change of view, how many conflicts avoided, and discoveries made. The world can take a lesson from a fine painting. You step back and see individual colors harmonizing together as something new.

 

Now, I teach art. Whenever any of us teachers at ArtLOFT see a student struggling to see something, guess what we suggest? That’s right, step back. You can’t paint a painting from one distance! Keep moving. Get a new perspective, take a fresh look. It works every time, just like magic; just like that day in New York.

About TF Tribe