NOCTURNE

Having spent so many hours over the past year awake in the night, I notice the world as it becomes its own ethereal complement. The light of the moon glows gently though the space between the curtain and the window, a pale slice by which I tend to my awakened baby and help him back to sleep. It is the very early hours of the morning that I appreciate the most, the sky paling to light. The coldest moment of the night now over, everything leans to the warmth of daybreak.

In a nocturnal world, edges are faintly gilded by the moonlight, color drains from the day, and there are new subtleties. My sense of presence heightens; I am aware of what is immediately near me, my warm baby, my breath, the cat as he brushes by. The silhouette of branches in bloom on the windowpane.

In painting, I evoke the close range of focus nighttime brings. It changes things to see only what is close. Like the moonflower that opens only in the stillness of a dark night, unfurling its saucer flowers that reflect a luminous moon, at night my eyes widen and I am open to what comes in the moment. Details and nuances emerge layer upon layer, the rest falls away.

While at a residency in Indiana last year, the artist Lois Templeton told me that artists are like potatoes. We both need a dark, quiet space to grow in, when nothing on the surface looks like anything in particular.