Why paint? (part 4) — Fluidity | Joseph E. Sherriff

There is a notion that's become increasingly important to me and increasingly well defined: the notion of fluidity. I've also come to learn that there's a whole psychological discipline devoted to this idea under the name of flow, and I will talk more about that later.

In my own experience, I have felt a growing need to dedicate a set amount of time to the highest performance of my chosen activity, which is painting. That might seem obvious. When a musician or an athlete steps onto the stage or into the arena, they know the performance is bounded by a beginning and an end.

As a painter, you're subject to various forms of resistance, and it's very easy to drift away: go and eat some chocolate, take a toilet break, stretch your legs, chat with whoever comes past, and probably many other ways of not being 100% committed and engaged.

There are also many material considerations that I have refined for myself [for example, brushes, paint consistency, and colour], and I believe much of this advice can be useful to others too. It all aims at one period with a clear beginning and a clear end, devoted to the highest-intensity activity possible, and therefore at removing as many obstacles as possible. It is also important to have a clear goal, to know exactly what you want to do and how you want to achieve it, and for that goal to be just challenging enough to keep you fully engaged.

But why should that matter? It's hard to say, other than that the intensity of the experience is itself the reward you are looking for. It's the intensity and the fluidity, that feeling of being alive.

I remember when I first started painting again, after a very long break for family reasons, financial reasons, and probably resistance reasons. I finally took some time and went into the Gorges du Guiers Mort. I came out at the end with a rather unimpressive painting, but feeling alive. I said to myself, "From now on, my guide in my artistic decisions must be: do whatever makes me feel the most alive."

For me, that happens most easily when I'm outside: outside of society, outside of my studio, outside of my own head, when I'm in nature.

The feeling of being alive comes from fluidity: when your actions seem to flow automatically one from the last, when the separation between your thinking and your doing disappears, and when time seems to disappear too, or to pass very quickly. When you experience that, you understand.

This is the central reason I paint. All the side activities that go around it (and there are a lot, and I'm afraid they're not as fluid as I wish they were) serve to create the possibility of these moments of intense, fluid aliveness.

Atelier Joseph Sherriff