Ali Silverstein - Blind Flowers

1. Things
As I pronounce this word (do you hear?) a stillness forms; the stillness surrounding Things. All movement comes to rest, turns into contour, and out of past and future time something lasting is composed: space, the great tranquility of Things which nothing drives onwards. (Rilke)

Blind Flowers 1
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 2
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 3
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 4
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 5
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
Blind Flowers 6
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 7
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper
- •
Blind Flowers 8
- 22 x 30 inches
- Watercolor on Paper

Blind Flowers

First of all, the blind technique is just a strategy of observation:

(“How does one demonstrate that the draftsman is blind, or, rather, that in or by drawing he does not see?”) Derrida, Memoirs of the Blind.

I started making the blind watercolors of still lifes purely as a discipline, as a practice of viewing intimately and presently. Without aesthetic judgment or concern, without critical distance, without looking at the paper, I try to simply record what I see, to trace the being-there as I look.

Blindness is the inability to recognize. Recognition is enabled by past experience (we are taught: cup,tree,man); in the present moment objects can refresh themselves in our vision and be known anew. This knowing-anew is intimacy -- is love. When a mountain is observed, it is no longer a mountain; it is a mountain SEEN.

Though the work records intensely and intimately the object of observation, the subject is ultimately the observation itself.

Blind Flowers 1

Blind Flowers 2

Blind Flowers 3

Blind Flowers 4

Blind Flowers 5

Blind Flowers 6

Blind Flowers 7

Blind Flowers 8