Everyone has their European moment—the eye that opens for an American when they are in a different culture. All eyes see different things. I was looking at paintings. My moment was European. It may have been elsewhere. What is needed is distance. We must travel far to see ourselves.

I was amazed when I saw paintings that I knew from books in cathedrals—with poor lighting, above stands of candles and worshipers kneeling in prayer. These works had an ecology, a web of interrelationships. Torn from this web, the paintings became something else. All things exist in relationship. Change the relations, and you change the thing. This was, for me, a revelation.

I had seen similar works, often by the same authors, in American museums. They were hung on bare walls. The lighting was perfect. I was able to put my face into the work and see the details of the painter’s craft. I remember experiencing a certain disappointment when first I came into the presence of many of the great paintings of Europe. I couldn’t see them. And I was truly blind to them. I had been accustomed to think that a painting was marks made on some surface. It took a long time to see that these paintings were this woman crossing herself, these stone walls and this strange scent of incense and age.

I make paintings, and they are nervous now. They wonder about the web they weave.