I was not painting.

I was waiting to receive some important source material for a big project I’ve been working on—more about that another day. But because of the delayed source material, I found myself going down a rabbit hole of reading, questioning, and experimenting with my paintings.

I’ve had a laser-like focus on a single project for the past two months, but then I had to hit the pause button. It’s a dangerous thing to suddenly become untethered like this—especially if you’re a reader like I am.

I found myself curled up with a pile of books in the corner of my studio—supposedly planning my next painting. And while I ruminated about water, its many faces, and the role it has played since the very beginnings of life on earth, my mind wandered to John Locke’s quest to understand the “primary qualities of an object.” What? You don’t do that too?

So now you see how dangerous a pile of books can be. Before I knew it, I was digging through old dusty volumes of Rene Descartes’ work, and thinking about Cartesian Dualism and all kinds of philosophical questions that seemed very important to answer. Poor Doug had to listen to me ramble on about these things over dinner, when I tried to explain why all this was actually me preparing for a new series of paintings.

I think of the words of science professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, “I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the voice in my head until I can hear the voices outside it: the shhh of the wind . . . and something more—something that is not me, for which we have no language”