The process is the outcome.

all white paintings and the perceptual shift from what to how

Dia Beacon is an art museum nestled near the banks of the Hudson River.

I spent the better part of yesterday wandering through its lofty halls. The gentle creak of floorboards echoing off brick walls and vaulted ceilings.

I almost didn’t go. It was a beautiful day. Halfway there I questioned if I wanted to spend it in an art gallery.

If I listened to my thoughts, I would have chosen a trail or a pool. Only so many of these summer days left. That’s scarcity. I don’t entertain scarcity.

I had to listen to what I felt.

I go where I am called. And where I am called usually has some sort of magic in store for me.

This was the usual.

When I’m surrounded by that much creative expression, I catch it like the best of colds, if I was prone to catching colds. I embody the frequency of the art, regardless of the medium, which ties directly to the purpose of this post.

At some point in my exploration, I found myself face-to-face with a series of white paintings by an artist named Robert Ryman.

Initially, there was a bit of an eye roll—multiple rooms, spanning enough square footage to comfortable house a family of six, lined with white walls featuring white paintings. All white paintings.

The eye roll is similar to the one I had when I first saw a Rothko, before I saw one in person. Before I realized his rectangles pulsed with electricity. Before I realized how they could envelope me. Before I realized they could vibrate off the canvas.

This eye roll was similar, because, at first glance, I saw nothing remarkable. Walking through this sea of white, however, I felt something.

I felt something, which, in my opinion, is the marker of good art. At least, it’s the only marker I care about. In fact, I believe it’s the function of art.

To elicit feeling.

To evoke emotion.

To channel frequency.

A core tenet that has long guided my philosophy for life and work is this: the result is a byproduct of the process.

People often fixate on the outcome, racing to it like a finish line, when the real magic lies within the process itself.

I believe the process is the stuff of life.

The finish line? Not so much. The only finish line is death, and even that’s questionable. The destination is not some future state that we defer our satisfaction and completeness to. It’s right here, right now.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, focusing on the process, instead of the outcome, tends to yield the best results.

The process—like life itself— is dynamic, fluid, adaptive, and present. The outcome is simply a reflection of that.

More recently, I’ve deepened this philosophy by highlighting the importance of frequency. Frequency precedes form. Focusing on the form a process takes, rather than its outcome, is useful in the act of creation, but we can go even deeper.

We can venture into the causal level.

The level of frequency.