Finding Patience: The Trees Through the Forest

Untitled (Red Dresses) 2010 Stephan P. Ferreira

Detail from Untitled (Red Dresses) 2010
Stephan P. Ferreira

When I finish a painting I often have a hard time seeing the whole. I'm stuck on details or the overall language of the painting.

I've labored so much over how I've articulated the imagery that trying to decipher any meaning is the same experience as trying to figure out what a word means after it has been repeated over and over: the word looses it's context, it looks foreign and suddenly you can't even remember if those letters are arranged correctly.

Having been so wrapped up in the painting I can only see the trees in the forest, as it were. It takes stepping away to eventually see the bigger picture. But before then, it's usually these small areas in my paintings that teach me and prompt me to do something else.

A recently completed painting based on a Depression era photograph got me thinking about what changes need to be made in my own process and what the successes in my work tell me about my focus and patience.

New York Review of Books: The Book as Object

Alberto Moravia's Boredom  in the NYRB edition

 "The series boasts exquisitely presented books—affordable trade paperbacks with a beautiful cover image and wrapped in a dual-tone spine and back cover that form a literary rainbow when shelved together." I owe my interest in Alberto Moravia to NYRB.

Although my interest has waned recently, the series has always been like a beacon. Last year (or longer) I also got hooked on Peter Handke. The NYRB version of Sorrow Beyond Dreams got me scouring shelves for old copies of others like Short Letter, Long Farewell. A few months later, NYRB release a whole bunch. And sometimes that's how it happens for me: seeing the series handpick an author like that highlights them. I may not have given the book a chance otherwise.