On Painting Things That Do Not Care About Being Seen- Painting Chickens & Flowers with Teresa Oaxaca at Crooked Oak, Three Day Art Workshop
- Teresa Oaxaca
- Jan 30
- 8 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
There is a particular relief in painting subjects that do not want anything from you.
Some of them move. Some of them wilt. Some of them crack if you are careless. None of them perform.
In Christy’s studio, the days unfolded slowly and deliberately. We gathered roses and wild flowers from her garden — some just past their prime, others still tight with morning — and set them among porcelain teapots, saucers, and cups worn thin by years of use. Fresh eggs were brought in from the yard: pale blue, warm brown, speckled cream. Cloth was draped and redraped. Small sculptures were shifted an inch, then another. Bits of bric-a-brac found their way onto the tables, not as decoration but as weight — objects that had already lived a life before arriving in a painting.
Nothing was precious. Everything mattered
This kind of setup does something important for painters, especially those who are still finding their footing. It removes the pressure to be original, impressive, or finished. It replaces ambition with attention. The work becomes not: What should I make? but simply: What is here, and can I stay with it a little longer?
Subjects Without Vanity
The flowers do not try to be beautiful.
The eggs do not announce their fragility.
The porcelain does not care if it is rendered correctly.
And the chickens — brought in and out, wandering through the room, pecking at scattered seed — care least of all.
Live hens and their chicks moved through the space without ceremony. A small bantam cock stood watch, attentive but untroubled. We encouraged the birds to linger by scattering seed, but they remained entirely themselves. They rearranged the room simply by being alive. A carefully observed contour dissolved when a chicken shifted her weight. A confident brushstroke was undone by a sudden flutter.
This was not inconvenience. It was instruction.
Spending time near Teresa Oaxaca as she paints feels like a privilege. She talks as she works, sharing stories about artists from history drawn from books she’s read and films she’s watched, and listening while the painting progresses feels intimate and generous. A shared love of birds, nature, and beauty comes through in little moments, like the way she gently held our little rooster, Tiny Tim. What stands out most is her freedom. She tones her panel just moments before beginning, allowing that base color to mingle naturally with the layers above, and the composition is allowed to evolve rather than being fixed from the start. The studio is small, the group is small, and everyone shares meals together in the house, creating a relaxed, personal atmosphere with a great deal of one-on-one attention. For those who love Teresa’s work, it’s a rare and beautiful opportunity to spend real time close to both her process and her presence. - Christy Talbot of Crooked Oak Studio
For many painters, especially those working alone at home, there is a quiet anxiety around doing things “right.” Choosing the right subject. Making the right marks. Not wasting time or materials. But chickens — like flowers that drop petals or eggs that refuse perfection — gently dismantle that mindset. They remind us that painting is not a performance to be evaluated, but a relationship to be entered.
To paint the unhurried life of a chicken, or the silent fragility of an egg, is to recover what John Ruskin once called the innocence of the eye — a way of seeing color and form before the mind rushes in to label, explain, or control. Chickens do not perform for the painter. They scratch, pause, flare, disappear, and return on their own terms. In that sense, they remind us that nature shows herself only to those willing to approach her as a disciple, not a master.
When a sudden flutter undoes a carefully placed brushstroke, it isn’t a failure — it’s instruction. Life refuses to stay fixed. Painting chickens teaches you quickly that nothing worth loving holds still for long, and that trying to trap it “just so” often drains it of breath. The work comes alive instead in that moment of surrender, when precision loosens and a kind of dither enters — that subtle play beyond mechanical accuracy where something warm and true can pass through the hand.
This is where chaos and order begin to speak to one another. The drawing still matters, deeply. But it is no longer an engine meant to run flawlessly; it becomes a vessel for attention, for responsiveness, for relationship. Painting stops being a performance and becomes a conversation — with the subject, with the day, with whatever quiet intelligence moves beneath conscious thought. Following these small, wayward paths, the painter learns to trust that something wiser than control is at work, guiding the hand toward a fuller, more living kind of truth.
Attention Without Reward (and Why That Helps You Paint)
Much of what keeps people from painting regularly is not lack of talent, but a misunderstanding about motivation. We tend to believe we should feel inspired before we begin. But inspiration, more often than not, arrives after attention has already been given.
In the studio, attention was required without reward. The flowers faded whether they were painted well or poorly. The chickens ignored us entirely. The eggs remained eggs.
And yet — something subtle happened.
When attention is offered without the promise of applause or improvement, the nervous system settles. The work becomes quieter. Painters stop trying to prove anything and begin responding instead. This is often the moment when people surprise themselves — not with brilliance, but with steadiness.
Showing up matters more than feeling ready.
This is why I encourage painters to think less in terms of outcomes and more in terms of rituals. Setting a table. Laying out brushes. Giving yourself a small, repeatable beginning. The subject does not need to be special. It only needs to be present.
Scenes from classes past at Crooked Oak
A Way of Living With Painting
What we practiced in Christy’s studio was not just still life painting. It was a way of organizing time.
Tea was poured. Chairs were moved. Silence stretched. Work proceeded without urgency. No one rushed to finish. No one apologized for starting over. The room held effort without pressure.
To choose to paint among objects that bear use — cloth that wrinkles, porcelain that chips, flowers that fade — is to accept impermanence as a collaborator. To paint living creatures who refuse to pose is to release control as a prerequisite for seeing.
This kind of practice is deeply supportive for amateur painters. It says: you are allowed to begin where you are. You do not need a grand idea. You do not need confidence. You do not even need consistency yet. You need a place to return to, and permission to work imperfectly.
Beauty, here, is not a trick or a result. It is a byproduct of care.
My studio practice is organized around the experience of sustained looking. This alone feels like a quiet rebellion against the hurried spirit of our time. Instead of rushing toward outcomes, I move toward what Jung once called the spirit of the depths—a place where attention slows and the soul is brought back to the last and simplest things.
In this environment, seeing matters more than drawing. The aim is not technical display, but a loving and faithful study of nature as she actually is. The method must be patient, delicate, and unforced. Over time, this way of working allows the eye to recover a kind of innocence—a return to a more childlike perception, where the world first appears as patches of color and light, before names, symbols, or judgments rush in.
When I choose to paint flowers that will wilt or animals that refuse to pose, I am practicing a form of obedience—not submission, but attention. It is an attempt to forget myself long enough to let the subject lead. All great art, I’ve come to believe, is delicate. It depends on a certain dither—a small, human deviation from mechanical accuracy that keeps the work alive. Without this flexibility, precision becomes lifeless, and skill hardens into display.
This willingness to relinquish control is also a psychological act. Jung described individuation not as a straight path, but as a meandering one, where the conscious and unconscious gradually learn to recognize and accommodate one another. Painting in this way mirrors that process. It allows growth to occur indirectly, through patience rather than force.
For students and amateurs especially, this environment offers something essential: permission to work imperfectly. Creation, after all, is one of the great redemptions from suffering. When beauty is treated as a byproduct of care rather than a trick to be engineered, painting becomes a way of harmonizing chaos with order.
Over time, living with painting like this builds a bridge—from the psyche as it is now, to what it is quietly becoming. And on the other side of that bridge is not mastery, but something better: a state of greater wholeness—integrated, calm, fertile, and alive.
A setup from the Painting Chickens & Flowers workshop in 2024
When I watch students paint in this environment, I often notice a softening. The urgency fades. The inner critic grows quieter. What replaces it is a willingness to stay — even when the painting feels awkward, unfinished, or unresolved.
To stay with a flower as it collapses.
To stay with a chicken that refuses to cooperate.
To stay with a painting that does not immediately reward you.
In a culture that asks images — and people — to explain themselves instantly, there is something quietly radical about this kind of attention. It does not demand transformation. It does not promise mastery. It simply asks for presence, offered again and again.
The subjects do not thank you for your care.
They do not remember you.
They do not care if they are seen at all.
And in that indifference, many painters find something they have been missing.
A way back into the work.
A way back into the day.
A way back into themselves.
Carrying the Rooms With Us
By the time Daniel and I leave the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the light outside always feels a little too immediate, as though the day has resumed too quickly without consulting us.
The galleries linger.
They are large, faintly solemn rooms — the kind that hold sound the way earth holds moisture — where history does not announce itself but settles quietly into the body. Stone figures keep their vigil. Carved animals, reduced to weight and stance, wait without impatience. Botanical studies and natural history paintings — leaves rendered vein by vein, birds held mid-tilt, shells opened to show their architecture — offer a world observed not for drama, but for record, care, and continuity.
Here, looking feels like responsibility rather than appetite.
Returning to the Table
Flowers are arranged without striving.
Eggs are set down without symbolism.
Cloth is allowed to wrinkle.
Chickens move through the room, pecking, blinking, pausing only when it suits them. They do not perform. They do not care if they are seen. They interrupt a composition simply by being alive.
Between the two, painting becomes less about expression and more about attendance. Showing up without guarantees. Beginning without confidence. Continuing without applause.
For many painters — especially those working quietly at home, uncertain whether their efforts “count” — this is the most difficult threshold to cross. Not the lack of skill, but the belief that one must feel ready, inspired, or worthy before beginning.
But attention, given faithfully, tends to organize motivation after the fact.
What Remains
In a culture that urges images — and people — to explain themselves quickly, to circulate smoothly, to prove their value immediately, there is something almost subversive about choosing a slower allegiance.
To look at things that do not care if they are seen.
To work among objects that will not last.
To measure one’s progress not by visibility, but by the quality of attention given.
The museum rooms — cool, shadowed, faintly echoing — return to me here.
So do the botanical plates, the animal forms, the patient hands of anonymous makers.
So do the chickens.
So do the flowers, already beginning to fall.
None of them promise meaning.
None of them offer reassurance.
And yet, in their indifference, they offer something more durable than certainty: a way of working that does not rush the eye or harden the heart. A way of painting that accepts gravity without despair, freedom without drift.
A way of living with images that asks not for conquest, but for care.
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