I saw a John Berger quote recently and tracked it down to “Drawn to That Moment,” collected in Berger on Drawing, edited by Jim Savage (Aghabullogue, Ireland: Occasional Press, 2005). This is on p. 71.
To draw is to look, examining the structure of appearances. A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at. Whereas the sight of a tree is registered almost instantaneously, the examination of the sight of a tree (a tree-being-looked-at) not only takes minutes or hours instead of a fraction of a second, it also involves, derives from, and refers back to, much previous experience of looking. Within the instant of the sight of a tree is established a life-experience. This is how the act of drawing refuses the process of disappearances and proposes the simultaneity of a multitude of moments.
The sentence I saw quoted was this, a gem I isolate for its beauty: “A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at.”
(No library in Canada had this book, and I got it through interlibrary loan from Rice University in Texas. Resource sharing departments are wonderful.)