Texture Hunting. Notes from a Walk

I went out with no plan but to notice. The path through the Wetlands was still damp from last night’s rain and the flax leaves leaned into each other like old friends. Someone had woven a flax plant. A small, patient act so I stopped to observe. I kept my phone in my pocket and used my hands instead. My fingertips traced the bridges of each weave, following the logic of it, the care that someone had put into it. Nature is full of teachers. Ferns curl like commas in the margins and the veins on a leaf are impossibly delicate. The small, persistent patterns the world offers are generous and unafraid. I noticed spider webs, the architecture made of patience and I took photos to remember how the light filtered through them. 

Back in the studio, I cleaned my hands and placed the day’s small findings on the table: a smooth pebble, a spiky flower bud, a twig that looked like a drawn line, decisive but fragile. Then I mixed plaster a shade lighter than the sky and drew a shallow line that widened then narrowed. Imperfect symmetry. This is what the art is I think. Not the object, not even the making but the noticing that leads you there. We’re taught to plan everything. To extract meaning quickly. But meaning doesn’t like to be rushed. It reveals itself in textures, in light, in the way your hands remember something before your mind names it.

Today was a walk. Tomorrow it might be something else. But the practice is the same: to stay open. To let patterns find you. To trust that attention is enough.

The world keeps speaking.

I’m trying to be quiet enough to hear it.

--AM