What Does Einstein Have to Do with Painting?

Most beginning painters think they’re painting things—a tree, a face, a barn, a vase of flowers. More experienced painters, however, understand that they’re actually painting relationships. That’s one of the hardest concepts to grasp because the relationships themselves shift with every brush stroke. Put a spot of paint here or there, and suddenly, you have a different painting.

Einstein said that measurements of time and space depend upon one’s frame of reference. While the comparison isn’t scientifically exact, the visual world—and that includes the world of your canvas—behaves in much the same way. One thing affects how another thing looks. This “affect” changes the “effect.”