The coffee is poured and still too hot to drink. Steam on the window, the radiator ticking, a day that hasn't quite started. Those few minutes usually slip by without you noticing them.
Here is a way to keep them: ten minutes with one painting, while your cup cools. You don't need to wake up earlier (if your mornings are already tight, these slow mornings for people who can't wake up any earlier might help). You only give those minutes something beautiful to rest on.
Choose the painting the night before
Decisions are heavy at 7 a.m. Pick your painting the evening before: a print on your wall, a postcard propped against a cup, a book left open, or an image on your screen with every notification silenced. Choose something whose colours you like. Meaning can come later.
If you want a place to start, try Monet's Impression, Sunrise. It's the harbour at Le Havre at dawn, painted quickly in 1872: an orange sun over grey-blue water. Two years later a critic mocked its title, and the name stuck to a whole movement, Impressionism. It was a morning, and the beginning of something.
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
The practice, in ten minutes
- Sit where the light is. Coffee in hand is welcome.
- Before looking, take three slow breaths. Let each exhale last a little longer than the inhale.
- Look at the whole painting for one minute. Don't name anything. Let the colours arrive.
- Let your eyes wander for three minutes. Where do they go first? Where do they keep returning? In Impression, Sunrise, most eyes land on the sun, then drift to the small dark boat.
- Choose one detail and stay with it for two minutes. A brushstroke. A reflection. The edge where two colours meet.
- Close your eyes and see the painting from memory for one minute. Notice what stayed, and what disappeared.
- Open your eyes and look once more, as if for the first time. Then sit in silence for the last few minutes, looking at nothing in particular.
If ten minutes feels like too much, start with three: one breath, one look, one detail. And if you've ever wondered how anyone looks at a painting that long, here is how to look at one painting for ten minutes without getting bored.
What to do with what you noticed
Nothing, ideally. It doesn't need to become a journal page or a lesson. But if a word comes to you, write it on a scrap of paper and leave it where you'll see it at lunch. The painting will come back with it.
Why a painting, and not just your breath
A painting gives a wandering mind somewhere to rest that isn't your to-do list. It is quiet but not empty. And unlike your inbox, it will never ask you for anything.
If you'd like a morning that begins with a letter
The First Letter is a short sensory meditation on receiving a letter, to read slowly over coffee, with a sample of our magazine "(meditating) On Art". It's free, and a gentle place to begin.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi