Over in New York City, Levi Nelson is working on his thesis for his Masters in Fine Arts at Columbia University.

Meanwhile, he has donated this piece, Forest for the Trees, 2023, 50 x 72 inches, an acrylic on canvas from his Sliced series, to the @audainartmuseum Illuminate Gala & Auction 2023.

It could be yours!(Although granted, I think they’re shooting for a slightly more up-market buyer than me…) The Auction is now open for live bidding at audaingala.com, and the sold-out gala at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler will wrap the winter season on April 22.

There is an art assignment I heard about, through Oliver Burkeman, a practice in noticing, for those of us with perennially fragmented attention spans. It has been assigned to her students by art history professor at Harvard University Jennifer Roberts – go and start at a painting for three hours.

“in our impatient, accelerated age, the mere thought of it is sufficient to trigger an irritable jumpiness. (Stick me in front of a painting for three hours and I’d soon be swiping my thumb on it downwards, to see if there had been any updates.) Roberts knows this: the whole point, she writes, is that it’s “a painfully long time”. She doesn’t expect her students to spend it all in rapt attention; rather, the goal is to experience that jumpiness, tolerate it, and get through it – whereupon they see things in the artwork they’d never have imagined were there.”

Oliver Burkeman

I am trying to imagine myself settling down in front of this painting for the long haul… what might I come to see, beyond my initial “love it.” I love the colours, I love the way Levi has been playing with these ovoid forms. But I know there’s thoughtful subversion and provocation informing his work too, and so I love, even more, the idea that something might jump out from among those trees if I just look for long enough.