Pull Up a Staring Chair. Day 2 of 12 Days of Beauty

🎵 "On the second day of Beauty Hunting / an artist said to me / get yourself a comfy staring chair." 🎵

Henry Lyman Sayen

Welcome to Day 2 of “12 Days of Beauty,” a spin on the seasonal classic in which you receive a daily amuse-bouche for the mind and spirit to close out 2024. Runs from 12/19 to 12/30.

Dear Beautiful Friends,

🎵 "On the second day of Beauty Hunting
an artist said to me
get yourself a comfy staring chair." 🎵

The December morning routine has been going like this:

Bed to kitchen; coffee cup to writing room, which now has a guest bed (aka “the nest”) that’s been configured into a divan with a harem-y arrangement of pillows. I lean back on a fluffy blue headrest, sip coffee, catch up on Substack, all the while intending to read and write, but instead: I stare at this fish painting.

I’m going overboard with these photo color fields.

I might feel worse about my undisciplined attention span if not for a couple of saving graces:

1. Art teacher Jenny Nelson’s wonderful piece about the “Staring Chair,” and the value of deep looking. You can read the article here.

2. I’ve been staring at a few art prints in my home, and noticing how I am beginning to experience them differently, noticing new compositions and color combos.

Exhibit A 🐠🐟

I have lived with the fish print for 14 years, since meeting my husband. I thought it was an OK piece of art, especially for a garage sale find; a bit ephemeral and lightweight. It was the quote won me over. In cursive handwriting, floating at the bottom of the ocean/print, is this unexpected declaration: “Love me to the depths of passion.” That made it for me, and over the years I’d stop and look at it in a hallway, do a scan, finish up with the quote, smile to myself, and move on.

Once it hung in an entryway; now it’s in my writing room. A reclining position puts the painting almost at my feet. The more I stare, the more the artwork shakes and shimmies before my eyes. The blues aren’t so light and careless; they have depth, a twilight richness that expands the senses. The yellows glow the more I stare into them, becoming pools of gold.

The other day, I met the khaki/green jewel-toned fish with the pointy nose. How about the exquisite quartet of fish in the lower-right quadrant, arranged like flower petals?

I’d always liked this painting. Now, I’m full-on enchanted by it.

Pull up a staring chair!

I love the idea of pulling up, or appointing a Staring Chair of your choosing, and doing nothing but focus attention on a chosen object or scene, and looking into it until it transforms. My mom, my beauty hunting mentor, used to sit outside her front door in Arizona, sip tea and look into a blooming cactus.

What if, the first act of being creative is staring into something beautiful?

Here are a few ideas around the Staring Chair, for paid subscribers.