how we actually see

Mark Horst "What have I become? no. 1" oil on canvas.

Hockney, speaking about his photo collages: 

“I realized that this sort of picture came closer to how we actually see, which is to say, not all at once but rather in discrete, separate glimpses, which we then build up into our continuous experience of the world. Looking at you now, my eye doesn’t capture you in your entirety, but instead quickly, in nervous little glances… There are a hundred separate looks across time from which I synthesize my living impression of you. And that is wonderful. If, instead, I caught all of you in one frozen look, the experience would be dead—it would be like… it would be like looking at an ordinary photograph.”

from Lawrence Weschler, “True to Life: Twenty-five Years of Conversations with David Hockney,” p.10