Heartsong Studio

Have you ever talked so much about a work of art you were just starting that you lost most of your enthusiasm before it was even finished? You can stop berating yourself for letting your enthusiasm run away with your juice. It’s all a matter of timing.

Salaam is the Arabic word usually translated into English as peace. Yet Salaam has many nuances of meaning besides peace - safety; security; immunity; health; obedience; freedom from fault, defect, imperfection, blemish, or vice.

Describing a visual image in words is a lot like trying to funnel a broad concept like Salaam into one word of another language. So much is missed in translation from the heart to the head.

In spite of the old clique, a picture isn’t always worth any words.

Not necessarily so. Sometimes even a few words can block the pictures they’re meant to enhance. Try to describe in words a misty morning or a newborn fawn you have just seen and not yet fully absorbed, and you muddy the natural order of things. Later, when you try to paint them, the memory is smudged.

Transmission is a term for how the non-verbal, spiritual essence of something, like a work of art, is communicated. Transmission through the eyes to the heart can be hindered or enhanced by many things that aren’t a part of the natural flow.

Here’s scientific proof of words impairing an image by 60%:

After two groups of people were shown the same colour paint swatch, they were then asked to identify the same colour from six swatches. The first group had been asked to describe the colour in words. The second group were shown the same colour but did not describe it.

Only 73 percent of the non-describers chose correctly. In other words, less than three quarters of these folks could tell if this experience of yellow was the same as the one they’d had a few minutes earlier.

BUT, only 33 percent of the describers were able to accurately remember the original colour. Words not only won’t do, they actually act to impair rather than improve visual identification and memory.

When your enthusiasm can enhance a picture by 300%:

Janine, a young artist was urged by her advertising executive father Rob to try this experiment. She listed the same painting on two charity auction websites. Site A had 400 bids, and site B had 500 bids.

On site A ,her work was titled “The Departed”, and was described in 250 words as being about the loss of her best friend. On site B, it was titled “Study in Blue”, and had a 95 word description about a study in tonality.

The highest bid on Site A was $650. The highest on Site B was only $200. Given a choice between two similar products, both of which we like and both sharing the same price, but one we know a lot about and one we know nothing about, we will likely choose the one we know something about.

After the work is completed, then a verbal description can be very helpful. It can lead viewers into the deeper meanings so they can appreciate them for themselves. Viewers are helped to receive the transmission, and to decide to buy it or not, by understanding enough of a work’s meaning and relevance to them.

Have you ever enhanced or impaired your perceptions with words ?
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