The Art of Seeing sessions

Every object well-contemplated opens a new organ of perception in us.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Without even acknowledging it, something arises in the space between ourselves and the words on the page of a novel when reading, or when listening to music, something that evokes our senses, our imagination, our emotions, our memory, our heart, into an expansive landscape . . . but have we lost our visionary capacity when it comes to looking at works of art?

In ancient Egypt, the sense of hearing and the ear were the primary sense, but this changed with the ancient Greeks. For them, the eye and ‘seeing’ became the primary sense. The eye and seeing was understood to be the most important mode of understanding oneself and the world through embodied forms of knowing which included reason, imagination and revelation. Art was created to awaken these ways of knowing – not just as a ‘re-presentation’ of reality, but as a moment by moment presencing (as McGilchrist describes in light of the brain’s right hemisphere attention). Today, Art still moves us in varying ways we often find hard to express, and still holds the potential to awaken these ways of knowing we have forgotten. Why does this matter today? To some people, it may not matter at all, but the ways in which art moves us gives rise to a depth and richness in life and which moves beyond just the art itself. The eye is not just a literal, mechanical function of the human body which interprets the surface reality we see around us, but a window, able to perceive something that comes through the world of phenomena.

Just one work of art is the focus of our attention and discussion each month. Different frameworks help to guide us into a deeper encounter with the work of art: the four senses hermeneutic; active imagination; the beholder’s share; myth; word through literature or poetry; enchantment; embodied cognition; creative writing; and shared conversation.

Firstly, slowing down to take time to really look and observe an image moves us out of linear time and into a different mode of seeing. Here we re-engage with what we see – character, emotion, gesture, atmosphere, nuances and subtleties presented through the image that are simply not possible from rushed or fleeting glances. We listen and look to the image, what is it trying to communicate? When we spend longer than a few minutes looking, we are also able to engage more embodied responses which include intuition, that are not attainable from quick glances or a rational mode of looking.

This is not to neglect the historical, rather these other modes of seeing and knowing we have forgotten in our modern age, add to the factual and historical.

These sessions are £10 per person. Email me directly to book at info@maryattwood.com or you can use the PayPal button on each individual listing.

Dates for 2026

The frequency of these sessions is reduced for 2026 while I continue to write my book but I will be offering the two dates below. Recordings are available of past sessions which you can also find below.

Thursday 25th June 2026

Current

The Art of Seeing – Metaphor & Meaning

The Art of Seeing: Metaphor & Meaning Thursday 25th June 2026 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Metaphor is the crucial aspect of language whereby it retains its connectedness to the world." Dr Iain McGilchrist This session will be recorded. This month’s The Art of...

Past Sessions

Recordings available for purchase

The Art of Seeing – Light and Darkness through the Four Senses Hermeneutic

The Art of Seeing: Light and Darkness through the Four Senses Hermeneutic Thursday 27th November 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "'Light' and 'dark' had powerful theological , intellectual and cultural connotations beyond art at the time . . ." Dr Christine Riding...

The Art of Seeing: Beyond the Surface

The Art of Seeing: Beyond the Surface Thursday 30th October 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Great art is the arrangement of the environment so as to provide for the soul vivid, but transient values, so that something new is discovered . . ." Alfred North Whitehead...

The Art of Seeing – The Perception of Memory and Time

The Art of Seeing - The Perception of Time and Memory Thursday 25th September 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "All great painting is about attempting to stop time, to make memory physical . . . This is the painting of love." Simon Schama This session will be...

The Art of Seeing – ‘Truth, Beauty and Love’

The Art of Seeing - Truth, Beauty and Love Thursday 10th July 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn This session will be recorded. This month's The...

The Art of Seeing – the perception of light and colour

The Art of Seeing - The Perception of Light and Colour Thursday 26th June 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.” Henri Bergson This session will be recorded. In this month's The Art of...

The Art of Seeing: Easter and the Christian Mythos

The Art of Seeing - Easter and the Christian Mythos Thursday 24th April 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “The heart of this people has been thickened, and they hear heavily with their ears, and they have closed their eyes - lest they should see with their eyes, and...

The Art of Seeing: The Metamorphosis of Spring

The Art of Seeing - The Metamorphosis of Spring Thursday 27th March 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "To 'reveal the mysteries' is to move the veils while preserving their dimness, so that the truth may penetrate but not glare. The transcendent secret is kept hidden,...

The Art of Seeing: The Magic of Light and Dark

The Art of Seeing - the Magic of Light and Dark Thursday 27th February 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “Black and sombre colours are necessary for the painter to portray the beauty of light.” Marsilio Ficino This session will be recorded. In this month's The Art of...

The Art of Seeing – The Mystical Illumination of Candlelight

The Art of Seeing - The Mystical Illumination of Candlelight Thursday 23rd January 2025 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us. . .' Meister Eckhart This...

The Art of Seeing – Angels and the Celestial Hierarchy

The Art of Seeing - Angels and the Celestial Hierarchy Thursday 28th November 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 ". . . those who are illuminated should be filled full with Divine Light, ascending, to the contemplative state and power with the most pure eyes of the...

The Art of Seeing – Van Gogh’s Eyes of Imagination

The Art of Seeing - Van Gogh's Eyes of Imagination Thursday 31st October 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “In a painting, I like to say something consoling, like a piece of music." Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, Theo This session will be recorded....

The Art of Seeing – a Harmony of the Hemispheres: McGilchrist’s Hemisphere Theory

The Art of Seeing - A Harmony of the Hemispheres: McGilchrist's Theory Thursday 25th July 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “Through the fact of our embodied nature, through art and through religion, the right hemisphere might still be able to make a comeback.' Dr...

The Art of Seeing – Art in Rome & Rainer Maria Rilke

The Art of Seeing - Art in Rome & Rainer Maria Rilke Thursday 27th June 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “Finally, after weeks of being daily on the defensive, one finds oneself again... and one learns slowly to recognise the very few things in which the eternal...

The Art of Seeing – Romanticism: Re-turning to the Imagination

The Art of Seeing - Romanticism: Re-turning to the Imagination Thursday 30th May 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - InfiniteFor man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’...

The Art of Seeing – Dr Carl Jung’s Active Imagination: Image as Cosmos

The Art of Seeing - Dr Carl Jung's Active Imagination: Image as Cosmos Friday 26th April 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “Looking, psychologically, brings about the activation of the object; it is as if something were emanating from one’s spiritual eye that evokes...

The Art of Seeing – Impressions of Spring through Word and Image

s The Art of Seeing Impressions of Spring through Word and Image - Emily Dickinson and an Impressionist Painter Thursday 28th March 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "A Light exists in SpringNot present on the YearAt any other period —When March is scarcely here..."...

The Art of Seeing – Meditation with a Masterpiece: finding stillness & sanctity through vision

The Art of Seeing Meditation with a Masterpiece: finding stillness & sanctity through vision Thursday 29th February 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "...but the imagination is unable to exist outside of the sensus communis, unless it passes to the memory where...

The Art of Seeing – Plotinus: Gathering in and Sculpting the Self

The Art of Seeing Plotinus: Gathering in and Sculpting the Self Thursday 25th January 2024 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Go back inside yourself and look: if you do not yet see yourself as beautiful [as participating in the Idea of Beauty], then do as the sculptor...

The Art of Seeing – Joy and Love through the Christian Mythos

The Art of Seeing Joy and Love through the Christian Mythos Thursday 14th December 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Joy does not merely illuminate our interior landscape, it transforms it. The world becomes different, marvellous and unique." Sister Wendy Beckett...

The Art of Seeing – the Myth of Eros and Psyche

The Art of Seeing the Myth of Eros and Psyche Thursday 30th November 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "But as Psyche wept in fear and trembling on that rocky eminence, the Zephyr's kindly breeze with its soft stirring wafted the hem of her dress this way and...

The Art of Seeing – the Myth of Echo and Narcissus

The Art of Seeing the Myth of Echo and Narcissus Thursday 26th October 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "He knows not what he sees, but what he sees invites him. Even as the pool deceives his eyes, it tempts them with delights. But why, o foolish boy, do you...

The Art of Seeing – Vision and Ekphrasis

The Art of Seeing Vision and Ekphrasis Thursday 28th September 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain; - these and the blue...

The Art of Seeing – the Enchantment of Nature

The Art of Seeing the Enchantment of Nature Thursday 24th August 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife: Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art: I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks and I am ready to...

The Art of Seeing – the contemplation of Beauty

The Art of Seeing The contemplation of Beauty Thursday 20th July 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom £10 “At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked educated people to describe the aim of poetry, art or music, they would have replied ‘beauty’.” Sir Roger...

Awakening the Psyche through Carl Jung’s Active Imagination – May 2023

In this month’s Art of Seeing session, one work of art will become our focus as we awaken the psyche, or soul, with the framework of the active imagination as our guide.

The Passion of Christ – April 2023

Following on from Easter, this month’s Art of Seeing session will focus on one painting telling the story of the Passion of Christ. Scenes of the Passion came to the forefront of religious art from the 1200s, at a time when both Francis of Assisi and Ibn’ Arabi, in different parts of the world, emphasised a move from the intellectual pursuit of the mystical in the head, to the heart and imagination.

The Ancient Egyptian Goddess – March 2023

The Art of Seeing The Ancient Egyptian Goddess Thursday 30th March 2023 "The Egyptians lived with an awareness of what might be called the imaginal - a non-physical yet objective reality that we become aware of through the human faculty of the imagination. They...

Unfolding Ways of Wisdom – February 2023

Unfolding Ways of Wisdom Thursday 23rd February 2023 7-8pm UK time via Zoom "The philosopher, even in his passions, acts only after reflection; he walks in the night but he is preceded by a torch." Philosopher, The Encyclopedie, 1765 We often think of...