O'Neill Cushman

As an artist, something that I hear a lot is "I don't get art," or questions like "What should I look for in your work?" or simply "What is this a painting of?"  So, without getting too technical, here's what I hope you will do when confronted with one of my pieces:

Think, for example, of the act of listening to a piece of classical music.  We've all had the experience of being in a room in which classical music is playing, but think of how you would go about listening to one, deliberately, from start to finish, appreciating and paying attention to it as a whole.  If you are anything like me, you wouldn't worry yourself with what the song is about, as there aren't words.  And you wouldn't spend your time thinking about its influences, its time period, or the social or political context in which it was written until after it had ended, because those thoughts would distract your mind from actually listening.  You would simply turn off the other sounds in the room, or put your headphones on, and allow yourself to get lost in the music.  You might notice its mood - happy or sad, triumphant or meandering - and you might contemplate how the notes you are hearing make it that way. Eventually you might start noticing that your experience of it is different when you perceive the piece as a whole, unified and greater than the sum of its parts, so that each part has its significance in relation to the whole. You might find yourself moved by that experience toward some kind of experienced meaning or feeling, based on your experience of the music.