Archive for October, 2006
Is Art Just a Frill ?
“Is Art Just a Frill ?”
What is the purpose of art ?
Is it to make beautiful things ? Is it for self-expression ? Is it for decoration ?
I overheard some talk about how a local artist had captured nature in her work. “You’ve really captured the ocean waves, the arbutus tree, the rocks.” He went on to say : “That would look great by our front window.” Given a choice to watch the living ocean or a painting of one, which would you choose ?
“Make a picture that looks like the same thing in the world.” That’s often the very assignment given to a beginning student. Most students wreck themselves on this first, impossible task. The fatal myth they’ve been led to believe is that art is for replicating beautiful things of the world. They do not understand that no one can succeed at this killing task.
Why not ?
Things in the world aren’t really things at all, but living events in process.
Things, even rocks, are alive, in constant motion, evolve, grow, die, have “souls”.
The world is a four dimensional thing ; three of space, one of time. Images on canvas or paper are two dimensions and frozen in time. Even sculpture, though 3-D, is still frozen in time.
You can’t “have” the stars, the ocean, a butterfly, or any other thing. In this light, it is absurd to think of artists as painting nature, like “hand made photography”. Trying to capture nature is like trying to grab a butterfly or the stars.
You can relate to the things that move you by feeling your kinship. Rather than “faking” with technical tricks, you need to open to an uncomplicated feeling of oneness with the moment. Your creations are a result of all the events of your life that went into making you you. What you are is what you do.
The exciting thing about this is that it’s mutual. It’s a relationship. Instead of taming, classifying, examining a tree at arm’s length, you can become bound up together, the tree and you.
To leave your unique marks of a relationship, is the basis for an expressive, articulate image. Not a dead replication of something alive, but an image that is personal, drawn from within, made in homage to the world without.
Your artwork can also be ‘read’ as a relationship between you and your inner self. This can help you realize that your original self is still alive and recoverable. In searching for new meanings in the world without, you may find new meanings within, which are totally unique to you.
Whenever you make shallow and uninteresting things, it is because you challenged yourself to do shallow, uninteresting things.
The real task of art is to search for new meanings and create a new reality. Combine what you receive through your senses with what wisdom resides in your heart.
The result may very well be beautiful as well as revealing depths of yourself you didn’t know were there. Meaning is what you’re after, not beauty : big, deep, wide meaning, which may be, incidently, quite beautiful.
In order to draw from within an image that is personal and unique, not a dead replication of something alive, you have to give up your hold on this world, even if just for awhile. You cannot be fully in both worlds at the same time.
In order to draw from within an image that is personal and unique, not a dead replication of something alive, you have to give up your hold on this world, even if just for awhile. You cannot be fully in both worlds at the same time.
How can you let go of the hold ordinary living has on you, so you can begin to open to the possibility of a larger, a new, an unknown universe ?
The intellect cannot deal with the unknown. That’s not its job. While this mind of yours is a mighty powerful thing to have for many reasons, for venturing into the unknown, it is in completely foreign territory. So you want to be free of it’s tenacious hold on your consciousness. for this task.
How could you do this ?
* * * Stop looking.
What ? ? ? Stop looking. Close your eyes and go on automatic pilot. Your visual imagination will ooze images. Just notice them as they emerge, without labelling them. Stop working so hard to force it out. Allow what is already there to stream out.
Often there’s a lovely moment before sliding to sleep when we’re at the threshold between asleep and awake, that images start to “morph” and slide. This is the mind loosening its hold on self-conscious perception, allowing spontaneously generated imagery to do its work.
* * * Notice how you feel.
Accept exactly how you feel now. Don’t try to relax. What you need to do is give yourself permission, time, and space to be in your body now. Can you grant yourself this necessary pleasure ?
If you want it to, any art can be a process of healing. It can take you way beyond decoration, beyond mere self-expression. To the extent you can remain curious, you can venture where no man has gone before.
Starting with the first conception of an idea, you can move through incubation, hatching, nourishing, learning to fly, and precision flying.
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No commentsAre You Truly Creative ?
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Are you truly creative ?
Do you feel like you’re not very creative in the work you do ?
Do you suspect that it is others who originate all the good ideas, and you just “borrow” from their work ? When you need to take the lines from a model or photo of the subject you want to illustrate, do you feel pangs of guilt ? Or do you just guess from memory ?
This can be a touchy subject for many artists, including me. If I want to see exactly how a hand appears from a certain angle in a particular pose, I might use a model. Or if one isn’t handy (pun intended), I might use a mirrored reflection of my own hand. Am I really being originally creative, when I use a photo, or drawing from which to take the forms I need, or am I stealing ?
What is creativiy anyway ?
Can a mere mortal create something completely new, out of thin air ? Do only some people have ideas, face problems, dream, live in the real world, and breathe air ? Isn’t everything already in existence ? It is said that everything inside and outside us was created by the One, by Divine Essence. A deep respect for this need not tie our hands though.
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
Except to a little child. To him everything is brand new. Remember how you learned to speak your mother tongue ? It was by trial and error, with practice, copying, borrowing from the speech of your family, until your speech gradually became uniquely your own.
You may sound similar to your mother or brother, but there are many individual traits which are unique to you. Think of voice printing for security, more individual than fingerprints.
Exactly the same thing happens when you make images. First you borrow from nature, photos, or dreams. Then you practice with trial and error. (What you deem “error” is uniquely yours too.)
You no more created the original forms you borrowed, than you created the original words you learned to use. In time, you made them your “own”, borrowing heavily not only from your first encounters, but also from all your life’s experiences so far.
But hey, can’t we create another person, an infant ? Or, can we ? Not alone. We only, potentially contribute one half the seed to grow a fetus.
Sure, it grows inside the mother’s body for about the first 276 days, and it is born in a tumultuous act, but there’s still lots of growing left to do. And I doubt if anyone has the choice of which one of the billions of sperm will be the one. We can “only” take part in the process.
None of these examples can be construed as plagiarism, or theft though. Even when the intention is to steal images, even the most expert art forgers can’t fool everyone all the time. Art forgery is a highly skilled and therefore rare profession.
This business of stealing vs. originating appears to be a bit of a red herring.
You cannot create anything totally original, nor can you make anything without changing it with part of yourself. Often, in art colleges, students practice intentionally copying the style of a master, but to learn about how they worked.
Even an artist’s rendering of a picture of an original Picasso, is an original in its own right.
We aren’t machines.
We can’t help but add our own spin to the language we speak. That’s why they’re called living languages. They change over time with use by billions of people, and grow in power.
When we speak, we don’t just express ourselves, we also contribute something to the world and the future. Some tiny speck of energy is launched round the world. Literally.
Just so, we can’t help but add our juice to the images we employ. Everything we create, whether a child, a piece of art, a garden, a meal, a book, a fence, a math solution, a finger painting are all filtered through us.
Though it boggles the mind, it is true that when a butterfly flaps its wings in China, it influences salmon spawning in the Great Bear Rainforest !Â
Is originality a requirement for making “real” art ? Not at all. It’s a crippling expectation. Requiring yourself to be totally original is to stay focussed on you, the artist.
By learning to access your heart, you can focus on interacting with your subject from within yourself, so that the process becomes a dance, a relationship.
And this act is original every time.
Freshness is a requirement for meaningful art, would be a more useful answer.
This process of interaction to discover something new, can result in a discovery about yourself as well.
Marc Chagall was asked if he attended synagogue, to which he answered: “My work is prayer.”
In the process of making anything, a person not only illuminates and illustrates his inner life, but moves beyond personal expression to make something which stands on its own integrity.
Rest assured that your images can’t help but be rendered original the moment they spring from your heart.
Just as you speak your unique verbal language freely, so you can speak in your visual language with passion and assurance.
“It is in the process of giving birth to something which stands on its own, that the artist contacts a reality outside his/her subjective life and moves into the transcendent.” (Peter London)
“Go forth and multiply !” Well, at least create with a clear conscience.
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Celeste Varley
“Oh ! for a horse with wings.” Shakespeare
Let our hearts sing and take flight !
http://www.heartsongstudio.com
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