Most advice about looking at art sounds like homework. Study the composition. Identify the technique. Read the label. All useful, but it can make a painting feel like an exam you might fail.
There's another way in, and children do it naturally: make up a story.
Three ways to meditate on art
Art meditation simply means using a work of art as the focus of your attention. There are three classic ways in, and you can use them one after the other:
1. Observe the details. Colors, textures, light, the brushstrokes in a corner. You let your eyes slow down until the painting starts to reveal things you didn't see at first. 2. Reflect on the meaning. What could it be about? What do the symbols, gestures or colors suggest? How does it make you feel, and what does it remind you of? 3. Invent a story. This is the one we forget, and often the most joyful. You stop analyzing and start imagining.
How to invent a story for a painting
Choose a painting with people in it. A crowded scene works beautifully: Renoir's Dance at the Moulin de la Galette at the Musée d'Orsay, for example, full of couples dancing and friends talking under the trees in Montmartre.
Breathe slowly for a minute and let your eyes wander. Then:
- Choose one person. Give them a name. - Imagine their voice. Are they laughing? Whispering? What are they saying? - Ask what happened this morning. Where did they wake up? What did they eat? Who are they hoping to see here? - Give them a secret. Something no one else in the painting knows. - Imagine the next hour. Where will they go when the music stops?
You're not trying to find the "right" answer. There isn't one. You're giving your full attention to a few square centimeters of paint, and letting your imagination meet the painter's.
Why it works as meditation
Imagination is a form of absorption. When you invent a story, your mind stops wandering towards your to-do list because it has somewhere more interesting to be. Ten minutes pass like two. And you'll remember that painting far longer than one you merely studied.
Keep your stories
If you'd like to collect the paintings that spoke to you, The Collector's Diary is a free printable journal with a short guided meditation. Its prompts help you remember where you met a work of art, what you noticed first, what your senses took in, and how it made you feel. Add your invented stories in the margins. One day, you'll have a whole book of them.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi