Timing is Everything

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Watercolor © Joseph Zbukvic

Time, or at least my sense of it, seems to have changed in my lifetime. As a kid, I can remember not needing a watch. The sun was my time piece. Once I got a job, I also got a watch, but only to make sure I showed up on time. Clock-time was never my strong suit—art-time was. Since those days, it seems that life has sped up and everything is run by the clock.

But, humans have an innate and nature-based time awareness developed from marking time slowly by watching the sun and seasons over tens of thousands of years. That is the clock most useful to making art—art-time. Artistic exploration and creation takes whatever time it needs. This is the time-space where we can thrive and sometimes experience that wonderful feeling of being in the zone and losing all sense of clock-time whatsoever. Great things can emerge from this.

Watercolor is the same way. Working in watercolor is all about timing and patience. It has its o…