One of my favorite take a minute exercises involves finding a piece of challenging art and having a few deep breaths while absorbing the work. In Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings i like to contemplate his painting process in the use of his home made squeegees and un naturalistic colors that are dictated by clues and a dialog with the canvas itself. I like comparing his photo realistic scraped paintings to his 70's abstract work. These paintings( 70s abstract), though fully abstracted and process based gives us, in my mind, a kind of meditative landscape that creates a bridge that connects our ideas of what natural realism could be , and what our reactions to natural landscapes dictate . It is human nature when looking at a painting to automatically search for a horizon line or a facial feature, or anything we can become visually fixated to, but to approach a painting with a open frame , and meditative mind we can break away from these fixations and find our way into the beautiful worlds and thematic battles created by Richters paintings. This approach is obviously quite useful in any endeavor. Breath in, breath out folks