About

On January 1, 2022

I began a new routine. I started each morning painting a canvas following a self-imposed set of pre-defined rules.

At first, I began by painting the canvas white, with one dip of the brush in paint and then one long brush stroke from the top left corner of the canvas to the top right. The next stroke, clockwise from the top right to the bottom right.

Then, another dip of paint and the same pattern, beginning one row lower, and stopping where the elbow of the previous paintstrokes met.

I repeated these strokes again until the canvas filled with brushstrokes that looked like arrows pointing northeast. The aesthetics weren’t the point; in fact, sitting with any aesthetic imperfection was precisely the point.

At night, I wrote a reflection on the canvas.

And the next day, I rotated the canvas one turn-clockwise and repeated the same pattern, starting this time with blue, then a reflection, then red, then a reflection, then yellow, then a reflection, then white again. So — 5 layers, 5 days, White -> Blue -> Red -> Yellow -> White.

The next 5 days, I started a new canvas, but began the process with blue. Blue -> Red -> Yellow -> White -> Blue.

I rotated through each canvass of 5, starting with the next color in the sequence, until I’d made it through a full cycle: 25 days, 25 reflections, 5 canvas cycles.

At that point, I dated the canvas and began my next set of rules.

Throughout the process, it was important to paint over any memories. I toyed with taking no pictures; leaving no trace of those reflections but whatever poked through the layers of paint. On some days, I caved to modern memory-machines and took images of the before-and-after, often with the vague notion that I might do some experiment with those images as well. Perhaps I will.

But for now, what you see is a kind of archive; time capsules containing thoughts and anxieties, pain and happiness, ambitions and hopeless moments, all under a skin whose only overt marking is a timestamp and and my initials.

I made it to March 7 without wavering, even bringing the canvasses with me on international trips. But as travel became unrelenting and my relationship with my girlfriend resumed (and my desire for privacy during painting displaced my need for this ritual), you can see the time intervals elongate from its steady 5-day beat until it faded out on June 6.

This process was meant to be meditative, a reprieve from morning anxiety. It was meant, too, to be an active reminder to leave attachments behind and start each day - each moment - fresh. It served its purpose, and then, perhaps ironically, it was subsumed by the forces of stress, anxiety, work achievement, competition that it buffeted for a few months.