Day 27: Finding the Music: Painting Jazz Musicians and the Practice of Paying Attention

I said the musician series was complete after three, but I felt compelled to create another one this morning. There is something about these jazz musician paintings that—pardon me, but I just have to—hits the right note for me right now.

Even though I’m working to be loose and impressionistic, I have to navigate far more complex relationships in these compositions than in, say, my small bird paintings. The negative space isn’t just background—it’s made of shapes that are integral to the composition, and their proportions form the gestures of the figures themselves.

There is no daydreaming here. I’m—as my 13-year-old would say—completely locked in. You could be dancing the hula in the back of my studio and I probably wouldn’t even notice. And in a world where I am so often glued to my phone, it’s nice to do the opposite. Not surf or scroll, but really look, compare, notice, and pay attention.

I heard the term attention economy recently, used to describe the constant efforts to capture what has become a precious commodity—our attention. While so many forces, some quite nefarious, are vying for it, I think it’s more important than ever that we create non-digital things with our hands and bodies. Music. Art. A gorgeous meal. A perfectly placed pillow. A ballpoint pen scribble along the yellow lines of a legal pad.

There’s so much noise.
This 31-day painting practice is about finding the music.

Where in your own life do you feel most fully locked in—where the noise falls away and your attention becomes embodied instead of divided?