Before You Judge, Learn to See

What happens when we stop simply recognising what we see?

Every morning, I sit in my garden with my coffee and watch the bees, birds, flowers, shadows and wind. At first, I see a garden. But when I remain there long enough, something changes. I begin to perceive relationships: between bee and flower, movement and stillness, light and shadow, parent and offspring, colour and space.

Nothing in the garden has changed.

My perception has.

This is where observation begins.

In this episode of Brushstrokes of Being, I explore the difference between recognition and observation, and why sustained observation is one of the foundations of what I call visual intelligence.

Visual intelligence is not simply seeing more. It is the ability to perceive relationships, understand them, and eventually make deliberate choices with them.

And this matters far beyond drawing and painting.

We live in a culture of rapid recognition, categorisation and judgement. We are constantly encouraged to decide what something is, whether we like it, whether we agree with it, and which category it belongs to.

The arts are not immune to this.

We categorise artists as traditional or contemporary, realist or abstract, painter or conceptual artist. We can then move almost instantly from category to preference:

I like it.