Joan considered for a minute. “You have to remember that the photos aren’t necessarily about the people in them—just like you said. They expressed things I wanted to say. When I made those pictures I think I wanted to stop time. The kids were growing up so fast, and in a photograph, they stay that age forever. But then they grew up, and . . .” She waved her hands and frowned. “I’m not explaining this right. I’ve realized—over time—that all my work is about time. When I started—you remember, Aria, I told you I did that performance art. That was about ephemerality, how quickly time passes. The pictures were a way of stopping time. Instances. I liked making them, but then I started to want to express the slower passage of time. Deep time, like through geological processes. Painting landscapes enabled me to do that because—well, the landscapes, the shape of rocks, the way water cuts through the land—all of that is deep time. But also, the act of painting allows me to show time passing in physical ways. The paint itself, brushstrokes, impasto—it shows motion, gestures. You can make light and shadow appear to move across the canvas with techniques of illusion. And it’s physical—a photograph of a painting doesn’t do it justice, but if you’re standing there in front of the painting in real life, you see the work of the hand on the canvas in the brushstrokes, the way the paint is applied. It’s very obvious that it was physically constructed by a person. The artist. I think I’m increasingly interested in showing the physical marks of the artist. Handwriting, fingerprints. I suppose it’s also a way to freeze time, but in a way that’s more obvious to the viewer.” She laughed. “And of course, that counteracts the slow passage of time that I said I was interested in, so you might think I’m contradicting myself, but it’s all one thing.” She made a circular gesture with her hands. “All of it is linked together in ways that I can’t really describe.”

I felt as if I were on the verge of understanding what she meant. It reminded me of Grandpa, who told me we could travel back in time by looking at the stars. It took millennia for the light of some stars to reach us, so when we saw them from our vantage point here on Earth, we were actually seeing the past.

“No, thank you for all that,” Steph was saying. “I really appreciate hearing about it.”

Joan took a sip of iced tea and said, “I’ve gone on for too long. Tell me about your music. Have you always written songs?”