The Three Times (Triptych)
Oil and Charcoal on Canvas
64" x 16" (3 Canvases, each 20" x 16", with a 2" separation)
These three canvases represent the three times: future, present, and past. They illustrate how we experience time as it flows past and through us, and yet usually don't notice that flow. We might anticipate an event that we expect to happen in the future. We can imagine how the event will seem when it arrives, and perhaps concoct a rough outline of a story about the event - a kind of black and white image. Meanwhile, the event comes closer and closer to the present, and then in an instant, in a blink of an eye, in literally no time at all, it is the present. Suddenly what we thought we knew about this event is no longer hypothetical - it has flashed into being with all its sensory and emotional realities. What was imagined is real to us, no longer a rough outline but seen in full living color, sometimes with unexpected clarity and impact. There is actually nothing we can point to that distinguishes this present moment from the future that we anticipated, and the past that we now experience receding in our rear view mirror. And yet we could not fully anticipate this present, never really know its full range of image, sound, smell, touch, taste, emotion, no matter how much we thought we knew about it. The raw presentness of the moment will likewise inevitably begin to disappear as it becomes the past. Every moment, momentous or ordinary, will fade into our memory, and be re-interpreted, distorted, and recolored over time. And of course the next present moment is just waiting to happen, BOOM, it's there, and zsiszzzz, it's gone. I see the bird in the painting as both the object of perception, and an actor with its own perceptions. Thus, if we pass this bird on the beach, we will anticipate the passing as OUR future, know it as OUR present, and remember it as OUR past. It will be our own little film strip. Yet the bird too is walking into its own present, with a unique never-ending movie of three times. And so it is with all beings, this kind of parallel experiencing, each being largely unaware of the process of time for the other.
Oil and Charcoal on Canvas
64" x 16" (3 Canvases, each 20" x 16", with a 2" separation)
These three canvases represent the three times: future, present, and past. They illustrate how we experience time as it flows past and through us, and yet usually don't notice that flow. We might anticipate an event that we expect to happen in the future. We can imagine how the event will seem when it arrives, and perhaps concoct a rough outline of a story about the event - a kind of black and white image. Meanwhile, the event comes closer and closer to the present, and then in an instant, in a blink of an eye, in literally no time at all, it is the present. Suddenly what we thought we knew about this event is no longer hypothetical - it has flashed into being with all its sensory and emotional realities. What was imagined is real to us, no longer a rough outline but seen in full living color, sometimes with unexpected clarity and impact. There is actually nothing we can point to that distinguishes this present moment from the future that we anticipated, and the past that we now experience receding in our rear view mirror. And yet we could not fully anticipate this present, never really know its full range of image, sound, smell, touch, taste, emotion, no matter how much we thought we knew about it. The raw presentness of the moment will likewise inevitably begin to disappear as it becomes the past. Every moment, momentous or ordinary, will fade into our memory, and be re-interpreted, distorted, and recolored over time. And of course the next present moment is just waiting to happen, BOOM, it's there, and zsiszzzz, it's gone. I see the bird in the painting as both the object of perception, and an actor with its own perceptions. Thus, if we pass this bird on the beach, we will anticipate the passing as OUR future, know it as OUR present, and remember it as OUR past. It will be our own little film strip. Yet the bird too is walking into its own present, with a unique never-ending movie of three times. And so it is with all beings, this kind of parallel experiencing, each being largely unaware of the process of time for the other.