Art as Meditation: My Method for Observing a Painting

Great museums are filled with people at all hours. And I always wonder: how many visitors truly come to appreciate a painting? Is a museum, with its bustle and rush, really the best place to do so?

For me, observing an image is an exercise in meditation that is cultivated over time and offers immense satisfaction. It is a habit I practice daily, anywhere, and for as long as I wish: the length of a song, twenty minutes, or even in fragments throughout the day.

The first step is to forget what has been written about the painting: the author, the era, the context. It is enough to let yourself be drawn to an image and carefully look at what it represents, what action is taking place, what details appear in each layer.

Then comes the technical part: composition, colors, light and shadow, brushstrokes, possible “mistakes” that may in fact be intentional. All of this helps to understand what the work conveys.

Finally, the essential arrives: what the painting makes me feel. I do not try to decipher the author, but rather allow the work to awaken in me a personal experience. I connect what I see with my own life.

Sometimes that impression arises instantly; other times it reveals itself after returning again and again to the image, in a book or an app, though nothing replaces seeing it in person, with its size and physical presence.

What matters is that the work lives within us, that we remember it, that it sparks conversation, and if it awakens true curiosity, then yes, seek out what has been written about it. Even a painting without a known history can be fascinating, especially if it comes from an emerging artist.

Any pictorial work thus remains alive. And with this exercise, we open ourselves more and more to a world that may sometimes seem incomprehensible, accessible only to a few scholars, but which nevertheless speaks to everyone.