Yeah,

what's he left me with? I did ponder the question.

So to Simon's first point, I think it's right, it is...

It's a state of mind, obviously, rather than a thing to do.

I'm too busy to do this thing.

It's a state of mind that people need to get into or to adopt.

And part of that comes through stopping, slowing down, paying attention, stepping back, etc.

We know the way it's going.

So when someone steps into a John Rice world, what do you hope that they

feel first? You know, I just want them to have a personal connection to the artwork.

um i try not to i think it's a trap a little bit once you get to a certain point of being an artist to like start to over analyze your own work and be like why am i doing this what what what threads am i seeing through my work i think that sometimes you can then start to then uh start to start to put those things in your work intentionally as opposed to just letting them happen organically so i think eventually what people started to see in my work was that i create these images they're often vistas they're often landscapes um they have a very first person feel to them so like sometimes there's figures but they're often incidental like very little tucked in the corners um they're often passive figures not really doing anything super interesting but like like the viewer kind of like staring at at this expansive world in front of you and to me i found that that makes people feel connected to the artwork in a deeper way.

It gives them a little more agency in the artwork because they're not looking at a figure doing something.

You know, they're not looking at, oh, those people sitting in the bar drinking absinthe, like the very famous, some very famous French paintings.

there that puts the emphasis on the figure it makes the figure doing something so we're looking at them voyeuristically whereas when you feel like the subject looking at these expansive views i think that that forms an instant connection that then allows you to make your own associations with the artwork at least that's my hope and again i try not to think too much about that when i'm doing new stuff um Because then it's tempting to be like, OK, well, this is my signature style.

Let me just make everything look a certain way.

Explain that to our listeners.