A Temporary Shelter in the Territory of Uncertainty

Painting can be a temporary shelter in the territory of uncertainty.

A crossing.

A place where one listens to what has not yet been named,

where gesture precedes thought,

where the hand reveals what the mind has not yet understood

 Nietzsche spoke of the will to power —

that force of existence that does not bend to form,

but dares to create the new.

Painting is that:

allowing life to assert itself as a force that escapes,

that insists, that transforms.

 In Spinoza, there is conatus:

the silent drive within each being

to persist in its own existence,

to remain alive in its own way.

To paint is to sustain that breath,

even in the midst of chaos,

even without knowing the way forward.

In Deleuzian writings:

to become other,

to become color, line, flow.

On the canvas, there is no fixed identity.

There is passage.

There is a body thinking in image,

and a thought moving in matter.

Painting does not need to explain —

it touches.

It does not need to prove —

it provokes.

It does not need to conclude —

it opens.

In this shelter made of uncertainty and desire,

doubt is not the enemy —

it is fertile ground.

Mistake is not failure —

it is entry.

The image does not clarify —

it overflows.

To paint is to trust

that there is something in us that knows

before it knows.

Germinating potency