Pa. German Chest c. 1940

David Dorfman made this Pa. German Chest, most likely in watercolor, but you never know. I think of the act of painting, how it is a way of understanding something, of making it come into being. I sympathize with David here. I imagine him looking at this object for hours, days maybe? To understand its form, to grasp its very being. What was he thinking as he painted it? Was he trying to preserve it in some way, or just to understand it? You know, when I'm painting something, I look really, really hard. And that looking, that attention, is a form of love. That close looking is what connects artists across time. We are constantly borrowing from each other, responding to each other, in an ongoing conversation. Painting is an embodied practice, a way of knowing, and of embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.