The Ethics of Attention
The canvas keeps a ledger of my awareness. Where I hurry, it breaks. Where I listen, it lives.
In a world flooded with images, scrolls, and instant reaction, attention has become a scarce form of currency. Yet in the studio, attention is not merely a skill—it is an ethic. It dictates the quality of the work and the honesty of the process. Every line I pull, every silence I leave untouched, carries a trace of how fully I was present in the moment of making.
Painting exposes your attention. It records where you rushed, where you hesitated, where you forced an idea instead of listening to the surface. The canvas does not lie. It keeps a ledger of your awareness. When the mind is scattered, the work fragments. When the mind is clear, the painting breathes.
This is why attention is inherently ethical. It is a form of care. Not sentimental care, but disciplined care—the decision to truly witness what is before you. In painting, this means slowing down enough to see the relationship between line and color, between density and openness. It means respecting the integrity of every gesture, even the ones that lead nowhere.
The untouched areas of a painting—the spaces we might call “negative”—are as intentional as the marks themselves. Silence is not absence; it is generosity. It gives the work room to breathe and the viewer room to enter. The ethic of attention is the ethic of giving space, of not overwhelming meaning with too much assertion.
For the viewer, attention becomes a form of reciprocity. A painting does not reveal itself all at once. It unfolds over time—first impression, then nuance, then resonance. To stand before a work patiently is to meet it halfway. To look without the urgency to interpret is to practice compassion. Seeing becomes a shared act, a quiet dialogue between the surface and the self.
In abstraction, this ethic becomes even more essential. Without narrative to guide interpretation, the viewer must rely entirely on their own attention. What emerges in that space is not instruction, but discovery. And discovery requires presence.
In my own life, attention has become a practice beyond art. It shapes how I listen, how I speak, how I move through the day. The discipline of the studio becomes the discipline of living: to see without rushing, to perceive without judgment, to remain aware without controlling.
In a culture that rewards speed, the deliberate act of seeing becomes resistance. It becomes moral clarity. It becomes art.
My upcoming book, The Shape of Seeing: The Genesis of Abstraction, explores this philosophy of attention as the heart of creative life — coming soon.
