The Staring Chair

One of the most intimate moments of the creative process is contemplation and deep looking. Many artists have a chair in their studio positioned at just the right distance and just the right angle to serve as a perch for these observations. Equal to your canvas or your brushes, the chair becomes one of your necessary tools. And like all of your workspace; the tabletops, floor and your clothes, the chair also gets covered with paint and materials. It has been surrendered to the space, to become one with all the other paint-infused objects. 

A piece of furniture that we would usually keep clean and tidy is now part of another realm, one of play, experimentation and mess. I don't jump when my brush slides across the arm of my studio couch with some Cadmium Green and drags a permanent mark.

The staring chair gives us permission to absorb, contemplate, or just space-out. 

I've had the same couch in my studio for over 25 years. It's a green velvet loveseat that I bought at a yard sale for twenty-five dollars. After so much time, it started to fade, the springs failed, and when I sat down the cushions began to sink deeper and deeper.

This sweet little velvety couch had been with me for so long and had seen so many paintings created and had been in so many studios — I felt like a part of my creative process would be lost if I let it go. 

I was attached, but decided it was time for something new. I thought I would bring the love seat to the landfill, but then I just couldn't do it and moved it to the back porch. I bought a new loveseat, but I never liked it nearly as much. It just wasn't the same. 

After a year of walking by it in the porch, I finally decided to reupholster the velvet loveseat, just to bring it back into the studio and get paint all over it again. I matched the fabric and had the cushions redone, knowing full well what was in store, and I was so glad I did. Here's to another 25 years of staring from the comfort of the green loveseat! 

Your looking time is sacred. This is when you evaluate, get deep, and make decisions about your work that wouldn't happen otherwise. 

I've put together a lovely group of pictures of artists in their studio chairs that I thought would be fun to share. What I love most in some of these photos is the contemplative gaze in the midst of the creative process. The evaluating and perhaps self-doubt we all go through. Throughout history, the studio chair is a comfort, and a safe haven for our deepest looking. 

 Susan Rothenburg 

Picasso

John Walker

Richard Diebenkorn

Pat Passlof 

Frank Auerbach 

Christopher Wool 

Giacometti 

Monet

Joan Snyder

“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”

― Henri Matisse