What’s the matter?

A prompt for new work

Hey y’all,

Years ago I read an old Chinese proverb: “Nobody’s family can hang out the sign, ‘NOTHING THE MATTER HERE.’”

I immediately set my son Owen, who was only 3 at the time, to the task of hand-letting us a sign that said just that:

When your kids are babies, they tell you something is the matter by crying, and then you run through a checklist of what could be the matter: “Are they hungry? Are they tired? Have they gone to the bathroom?” Later, you discover that this checklist comes in handy for humans of all ages.

“What’s the matter?” is also a good question for the artist. It’s a starting point, an inquiry that can lead to action. Our work is sometimes easier to begin when we ask ourselves what’s wrong, what we’re upset about, what’s irritating us, what’s itching at us. The maladjustment, the discomfort, the nagging suspicions, all of this is rich material for us to begin.

Some of my materials, the matter at hand

“What’s the matter?” might be an even more fruitful prompt when we think about “matter” as not content, or a subject to paint, or a topic to write about, or the reason for our distress, but the material we work with, the literal matter at hand, the matter we move around with our hands — the paint, the scissors, the paper, the words, the sound, the glue, etc. This type of matter will get us going when we don’t know what’s the matter.

Here is the painter Philip Guston, quoted in I Paint What I Want to See: