Heartsong Studio

“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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