Several years ago, I gathered a set of questions to support people looking at paintings. The power of attention and noticing has been important in all my work, academic and art. Visual attention as a painter is different from the aural and analytic attention I needed in my research into spoken metaphor.
These questions are an introduction to attending to paintings, particularly abstract painting. I’ve recently developed new questions that go more deeply into the theoretical aspects of painting - I’ll share these soon. Meanwhile here are my initial deep looking questions. They’ve been trialled in several gallery / artist talks - viewers are invited to sit with a painting for at least 5 minutes and then to respond to the questions on paper, through writing or mark-making. I am always amazed by what people find..
