Questions of Time

A general dissapointment with my work is stirred only by preoccupations with what I am actually doing. Latly I've been looking at my work less as images with content and subject matter, and more as a process that triggers and twines certain parts of me. For instance, with the piece above, I noticed that I seem to be laying down far brighter colors without the intention of challenging myself, but also without the usual reflex of annoyance that would keep me from using such colors at all. Strangely I am not much interested in color as a painter as much as I am interested in my perceptions and the responses they lead to as a human. I am growing deeply convinced that our ideas and experiences of perceiving time are fundamental to being human and and insinuative of whatever evolutions are possible for us.
I started out painting with communication and the distribution of specific ideas in mind. As a process this mean sketching out an image that I believed could best communicate the idea. The painting differed little from the sketch while I ignored color, sub-conciously fashioned people as impersonal as possible, and enlarged the scale to suit the materials I had. I paid greater attention to the essays pushing the idea from which the painting stemmed, everything was subordinated the the final result. When I realized I couldn't force people to consider specific ideas I valued I also began to paint in an intuitive non-intentional manner where I would curiously watch the brush strokes move waiting to see what they would form.
I used only black and white for a long time, interested in the unknown figures that would arise to reflect a feeling I wasn't really aware of having until I was responding to it. This absence of concious intention is what has been obsessing me to date. Does one think before hand "I will create THIS" or do they just get going and then at some point realize, "huh, so it's THIS." This consideration is most crucial in starting a painting, because once you're in there both processes naturally occur on various levels in various proportions.
Two years ago I wouldn't have been able to put down bright colors, my reaction would have been fully in the present tense. My reaction and assumption that "This is IT." would have prevented me from doing so, much less doing so with hardly noticing. But something must have happened, because now when working I am somehow aware that what I am working on is not "it", my awareness has somehow included a sense of the future.
St. Augustine apparently came to the idea that the past and future only exist in our mind. Where then does the mind exist? Personally, I am under the impression that something existing not in explicit tangible form exists nonetheless, and may or may not have potential for coming to exist in a more material form. I mostly experience my mind as far more vast, interesting, and 'real' as the physical world.
Where then does art exist? It does not exist in nature. Art is a reaction to natures indifference toward humanity. It is an excessive gesture beyond the basic requirements of survival. We perceived time in a particular manner when living in the woods, which affected our optical experiences. (such as identifying a threat in a camaflauged enviroment) what is happening inside me when I am making a painting? What is happening when it is 'done' someone stands there gazing?