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.
Frequency is the language of feeling.
The frequency with which a process is carried out will influence the form it takes and, therefore, be reflected in its outcome.
The frequency is embodied in the work itself.
Through the medium of creation, feeling is transmitted from the creator to everyone who encounters it.
Everyone who receives a creation, receives the frequency with which it was created.
This is evident in art of any form.
Let’s consider painting, for example.
Just yesterday, I received multiple comments and messages about one of my paintings from over the weekend. They mostly said some version of “Woah, I felt that.” One person told me it made him deeply sad, but hopeful at the same time. One person even told me it moved her to tears. This is because the painting carries the emotions—the feelings—I painted with.
The act of painting is the process. The form that process takes on—my brush strokes, my movements, the techniques I use, the colors I choose, etc.—is determined by the feeling I’m creating from, which of course manifests in the artwork itself and is felt by those who receive it.
And this brings us directly back to Dia. Yesterday. The art museum.
The creaking floorboards. The white noise of hushed voices.
Robert Ryman and his walls of plain white paintings.
One after another.
White painting. White painting. White painting.
Although a closer look revealed that these paintings weren’t the same.
They were all white, sure, but they had varying textures, densities, opacities, surfaces and sizes—subtle variations that only became apparent when I suspended the mental label of "white." Among these variations, each piece felt different for me. Each one provided a different experience. An experience I was only able to access when I stopped looking for what these paintings were.
Art is a conversation.
It invites dialogue with the viewer.
It asks questions. The viewer answers.
The viewer asks questions. The art answers.
The brain initially asks, “What is this?”
These white paintings, however, encourage a different question.
One that begins with “how.”
In the late 1960s, Ryman observed, “There is never the question of what to paint, but only how to paint.”
This work isn’t about painting something—it’s about the act of painting itself.
The common observer might quickly dismiss Ryman’s work as paintings of, well, nothing. I almost did. But that’s missing the point. These paintings reveal something profound, not in what they depict, but in how they were made.
They illustrate a process, the very process by which they were painted. In doing so, they collapse the process and the outcome.
Ryman's work reflects a minimalist and process-focused approach to art, where the creation and the final product are deeply intertwined
The outcome is the process. The process is the outcome.
How intrinsic.
The art is in how it was painted… the painting is simply a byproduct of that.
This idea reminds me of a quote I recently shared, attributed to Helena Bonham Carter:
"I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art."
I pay close attention to the messages I’m receiving, and there is a message that’s been coming to me in different ways from all directions as of late.
Life is art not in the way it is observed, but in the way it is lived.
This message is inviting me to take energetic responsibility for my life, to evolve into my fullest expression, and to let everything I do come from that place. It’s inviting me to bring the essence of my being into this world—not only through what I do, but how I do it—through the energy, the frequency, I bring to the process.
This is how life becomes art.
I invite you to let your life become art.
By art, I don’t mean performance. The best art is for no one else but yourself. The best art isn’t performance, it’s expression.
So let your life be an act of self-expression. Let it radiate with your essence.
Robert Ryman has said, “What is done with paint is the essence of all painting.”
In other words, the true nature of a painting lies in the act of painting—how the painting is done.
The same can be said of life. The essence of life lies in the act of living.
How you live is the process, and the frequency of that process is the essence of your life.
Everything you think, feel, and do in this life is a creative act.
That’s the beauty of art.
The art of living.