A constellation of lookers - by Henrik Karlsson

Above my writing desk, I have hung postcards of paintings by artists who lived within walking distance from our farm. They were naturalists, all of them, so they painted in the field. They spent their spare time looking at their canvas and then back at nature, gradually learning to see what was there, while capturing their seeing on the canvas. I don’t know why it felt so important to them—if they felt exhilarated by the layered richness of reality, the way I do when I feel compelled to write, or if something else drove them. But it feels good to look at the results of their labor. Studying what they looked at, it is like they are teaching me how to see my landscape. As I go for my midday run, I pass through a field that one of my postcards depicts. Before I saw the painting, this field used to just be a grey, flat plane, but now it vibrates with the vision of the autistic farmhand who stood out here for hours in 1943, looking. That is a gift. The artists I have hung above my desk didn

Above my writing desk, I have hung postcards of paintings by artists who lived within walking distance from our farm. They were naturalists, all of them, so they painted in the field. They spent their spare time looking at their canvas and then back at nature, gradually learning to see what was there, while capturing their seeing on the canvas. I don’t know why it felt so important to them—if they felt exhilarated by the layered richness of reality, the way I do when I feel compelled to write, or if something else drove them. But it feels good to look at the results of their labor. Studying wh