4 Steps to The Still-Life, Memory Part 3: Secrets of A Modern Painter

Every moment you spend developing your memory is worth hours of painting.

Memory is the key to filling your paintings with emotion and air.

These are not exercises to rush through. With this first 5 minute exercise, you are not going to try to do anything, don't try to memorize the subject, just look at it with no distractions.

1. Take a single object, maybe a flower, a teacup, or an old book and just look at it for a minute, move around it, seeing it at varying heights and angles. Pick it up, hold it, feel its weight and texture, see it in different light.

Now close your eyes and just feel it, moving it around in your hands , lift it up and down -looking at it with closed eyes- as you did before with your eyes open. Now, every hour or every other hour throughout the day, no matter where you are or what you are doing, close your eyes for a minute and re-imagine the object, feel it, see it as clearly as you can in your mind.

2. Begin to place the object on a table in your mind surrounded by other things - let objects come and go, move them around, not to try to design a still life, only to play with your memories.

Meditative exercises like this will allow you deeper access to your imagination and free you from the imposed boundaries you have created.

3. Close your eyes again in a moment and try to envision something you see every day - your kitchen table, the counter, a coffee table, your nightstand - try to see it clearly in your mind. Books, keys, receipts, shopping lists, pens and notes, rings, coins; try to see changes as the days have passed, like someone made a time lapse movie of the surface.

4. Now, I want you to imagine a table you might use for a still life painting and in your mind the table is empty. Next, place on the table 3 pears, a book, a pair of eye glasses and a vase of flowers. I guarantee two people reading this will not see the same thing - your vision is your own. Now, it is dark, the table is still there with the objects, but they remain hidden. I want you to imagine the first light of day - to reveal the objects slowly and remain with this vision as the light slowly envelops them and changes - as the day passes through to dusk and back into darkness.

Once you feel comfortable with this, begin to see the table again in the best chosen light to express your intention and feelings and rearrange the objects, removing some and adding others or coming up with an entirely different set-up.

Now to apply the memory exercise to painting.

First, create a still-life in your mind and paint the memory without the objects set up,
only referring to them in another room
when you need to.

Second, set the still-life up as you had imagined and paint it while looking at it.

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