ABSTRACT
IN THE END, what is painting? Is it the framed object, with its entourage of historical meanings, the gossip about its painter, and the ledgers and letters and files and reports and reviews and books it inspired? Or is painting a verb, a name for what happens when paint moves across a blank surface? Neither is complete without the other, but I have written hoping to convince people who spend time looking at pictures that it is not right to stress the first and neglect the second. The fundamental fact that argues for the importance of the act of painting, is that painters spend their entire lives working with paint. There must be a reason: the practice of painting cannot possibly be just an annoyance, or an efficient way to get images onto canvas. (As a way of telling stories or depicting objects, it is almost outlandishly inefficient. Practically anything else would be faster.) As I imagine it, an historian might think that a painter spends most time trying to get the representation just right (assuming the painting is not abstract). Certainly depicting things is a huge preoccupation, but it floats on the top of awareness. Oil paint can’t be entrancing just because it can create illusion, because every medium does that. No: painters love paint itself, so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to, rather than abandoning it and taking up pencil drawing, or charcoal, or watercolor, or photography. It is the paint that is so absorbing, so deeply attractive, that a life spent in the studio can be a bearable life.
