An electrician recently tore out a wall in my studio. As he dug around in the entrails of wires within the wall, we were talking. I observed that an awful lot of a house doesn’t show. The walls contain electrical wiring and plumbing and gas lines. Nobody sees them unless something goes wrong or you decide to renovate. 

He said, “That’s why I liked being a carpenter better than being an electrician. The hours of work I put in as an electrician don’t show.”

Of course, if something goes wrong with your wiring, it does show, sometimes catastrophically. But his point is well taken. And it made me reflect on our work as artists. 

A few years ago I was having a drink or three with Sean Friloux, a New Orleans artist, a water colorist. Sean had stopped by the apartment in New Orleans where I lived at that time. Debbie and I own a couple of Sean’s paintings, and admire his versatility.

Among his paintings which I find most captivating are the ones based on photographs a friend of his, a pilot on the Mississippi River, takes early in the mornings or under the moon late at night as his boat makes its way through the muddy river’s mists and fogs. You have to see these paintings to believe them. The subtlety with which Sean renders these scenes is exquisite. 

As we made our way through a bottle of wine, I asked him to explain his technique. His description reminded me of the description Stump Sam, a Gullah arborist in coastal Georgia, once gave me of how he’d have to go about removing a huge water oak from our backyard without damaging our house: “It’s Patient work,” said Stump Sam shaking his head, “Patient work. Mighty patient work.” Sean’s approach to rendering the essence of the ephemeral can only be described as patient work. Mighty patient. 

Sean lays down layer after layer after layer after layer of thin colors, the choice, the shade, the depth and variation of colors depending on what is affecting the mood of the scene. If it’s a scene long before dawn, a lonely ship drawing into a poorly lighted dock, blues and grays might be layered, each layer of paint so thin, so transparent, you can see only the merest tint of color. A touch of burnt umber in a wash of purple might be added in the most deeply shadowed areas, then he might return to grays and blues. The light, what light there is, perhaps a few weak lamps hanging on the dock, is signaled by the absence of the layering, made possible, here and there, with just the tiniest, perfectly placed masking. And perhaps just a layer or two of grey or yellow might be placed on the “light” after the masking is removed, to take away the stark white of the exposed paper. 

Each layer must dry before another can be laid down. The process can take hours, even days, as the paper takes in and fully absorbs the successive colors. If there is, in the scene, the hint of the presence of early morning sun, the process becomes even more complex, as yellows, apricots, blushes, enter the mix, deep, deep down in the layering process, so that in the end the illusion of sunrise meets your eye through the mists and fog of gray blues and faded whites, transparent here, obscuring the subject there, light bending in and through the darkness. 

I’ve only related a small portion of what Sean told me that afternoon. And Sean is a watercolorist, not primarily an oil painter like me. But the spirit of what Sean communicated goes for every medium. 

Maybe Sean has something of the electrician in him, the willingness to let so much work disappear deep into the painting, into the cavity of its walls, down where the painting’s pipes and gas lines and wires lie tangled, where nothing shows so that what is on the surface is able to convey the artist’s full vision. 

I’ve mentioned before J. M. W. Turner’s famous rebuttal of those who called him a “magician.” “It’s not magic,” Turner said, “it’s damned hard work.”

Patient work. 

Does it matter? Someone might wonder. 

Does it matter that an artist spends hours finding just the right combination of colors to create the black he or she wants to use? Why not reach for one of the several perfectly serviceable blacks made by any number of good paint producers? Why labor over combining Pthalo blue and veridian, or fuss about which dark purple is best to mix with the richest burnt umber you can find, and whether the night you’re looking for is suffused with crimson? 

Does it matter? 

Yes, but only if what doesn’t show matters. And what doesn’t show only matters if the final result is worthy of showing to others. 

The house doesn’t have to burn down to tell you that something deep in the walls isn’t right. A repeatedly thrown breaker will signal it. A flicker can reveal it. And in the same way you will know, what doesn’t show does show. 

It may only show to one person in a thousand. But the artist will know, and for the knowing artist that one person in a thousand is the ideal audience, that person who leans in hard toward the wall, who stands at an angle from the surface, who examines the painting with the greatest care, taking off their glasses or putting them on, and says, “Look here. These shadows along the shoreline are different somehow from the shadows beneath these trees. Look. Look here. The fog rising from the surface of the river has a different quality than the fog as it disperses at the hint of dawn. That’s more than real; it’s true.” 

“What doesn’t show shows.” That’s what I told my electrician.