How to See

In one of our exercises yesterday, as a part of our Without a Net (WAN) workshop, we practiced seeing. Not just looking, but actually seeing. I’ve taught this principle in my painting and drawing classes for many years, but in our WAN gathering we added more layers to the task.

The main idea is, whether we realize it or not, most of us aren’t seeing clearly. When I have a new painting student, I tell them that if they want to render a subject in paint, they have to focus on the reference material, not the canvas they’re painting on. Sounds simple, but few have any idea how object-blind they are.

To be able to render well (paint the subject in front of us with accuracy) we must have an objective view of it. It’s harder than one realizes. New students come to the task with an ingrained habit of conjuring an army of subjective thoughts immediately after setting eyes on a thing.

Say it’s an orange. Instead of seeing the visual properties of the object (its color, darks and lights, shapes) the new student glances at the object and reverts to memories of their previous experiences with that object. In a split second, with no conscious realization it’s happening, their mind says, “Ah, there’s an orange. I’ve had lots of oranges. They taste like this, and I like them, but I didn’t like getting them in my Christmas stocking…” The student has also stored a symbol of that object in their head. “It’s round and it’s orange.” All of these subjective cognitions get in the way of noticing what the particular orange that sits before them actually looks like. 

But isn’t an orange round and orange? It depends on the quality of light is shining on it. With a strong light focused on one side, an orange has a shiny white highlight, is yellow-orange where the light is most direct, and is brown-purple-orange in the shadows (or whatever color combo its surroundings are projecting onto it.) If one wants a flat cartoon symbol of an orange, only then is it round and orange.

Some people with loads of innate talent are good at seeing from a young age. I saw it for the first time in my daughter as a toddler, when I was teaching her the names of colors. One day she pointed to our white Venetian blinds and said, “Look, there’s green and purple and pink.” I corrected her and and said they were white. “No. See?” She pointed out that individual slats were very subtly reflecting colors from outside. She saw like an artist from birth. 

For most of us it takes practice to see more accurately, and rendering it through a visual art medium will develop the skill. A good teacher will help exponentially with it.

In our WAN workshop we did not draw a subject. We just looked at it, and had prompts for how to look at it. 

Story

We started with telling stories about what it meant, a subjective exercise, focused on its content. Everyone had a different, sometimes funny, always creative way of interpreting the iPhone-watching sloth.

Object

Next we looked at it for its visual qualities. It wasn’t easy without rendering it, but each of us noted different aspects of colors and depth-illusion and shapes. This was our objective view, as opposed to the storied subjective response of the first prompt. 

Our next exercises were a bit trickier. In the spirit of some types of meditation from Hindu and Buddhist traditions, we practiced noticing not just the object, but the experience of the object. 

Observer

Now I asked participants to observe themselves seeing. If you can’t wrap your head around this, you aren’t alone. It required that we notice ourselves in the act of connecting visually with the object. To do it, your attention is on yourself as the observer. The mind usually wants to hijack this exercise and try to understand and articulate it so that it can “do it properly.” Which ruins the idea. It is something experienced. 

Sight

Then our task was to observe the act of seeing. Not analyze or comprehend sight, but experience it. Again, participants weren’t required to “get it right,” but to try. A suggestion by me of imagining and feeling the space between their eyes and the object seemed to help a bit.

Seen, Seeing, Seer

Lastly I asked participants to connect, all at once, with the felt-sense of the object, the act of seeing, and themselves as the witness. It requires a bit of letting go. In daily life one usually experiences the  default mode of separateness, in which there is a distinction between the object, the space between things, the sense act of seeing, and the person with eyeballs. Experiencing them all at once is a micro-practice with oneness, an advanced meditative skill.

It was beautiful to see (on Zoom) people really staring at the screen, feeling into this new arena of exploration. Few caught on, which was expected, but it opened a fascinating line of inquiry. Each participant had a different level of connection with it, and, as with all of my workshops, there was an acceptance of everyone’s individual way of accessing (or not) the practice.

As with all new endeavors, being asked to see further (or more or deeper) seems to wake up new receptors to experience. The first time I was asked to try this practice in a yoga class I wan’t great at it, but it opened in me, ever so slightly, a portal to a new paradigm of seeing and being. 

It’s a good idea to get your eyes opened and stretched once in a while. Take an art class. Go to a museum. Or just look more closely at everything around you when you’re stopped at a traffic light. There is infinite possibility to how far and much you can see, and on ever expanding levels. Open your eyes today.