Who couldn’t use a friend right about now, someone hopeful, free, and alive?
Embedded in art is a call not only to self-discovery, as is often said, but a call to self-reinvention. Art isn’t something you do when you know who you are and what you want to “say.” It’s a way of probing those things, sure, but it happens externally – it happens in the world, not just in your head. If it’s real, it’s never an entirely conscious process. It is a reaching out to like-minded souls, and it teaches you about the soul you have and are.
Art’s underlying wonder is that it’s a form of creative community, wholeness, and connection, mental engagement and emotional energy – in a word, passion – and not just for art, or even the making of art – but for life. Life lived passionately inspires art, and art in turn inspires passion for a life well-lived.
Art grounds us, and it exalts us. It makes us see things we otherwise couldn’t. “This insight,” to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing.” You surely have heard the phrase “seeing like an artist.” It can mean lots of things, but connecting Imagination with a “very high sort of seeing” points to a way of exploring, a way of knowing, of finding out. Part of art is the process of reshaping who you are in the world, a way of waking up.
Larry Moore, “The Harpist’s Mistress,” oil, 24 x 24 in.
The kind of “seeing” Emerson means involves sudden moments of insight into what strikes as the truth and beauty of things, as Matisse laid out: “The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is … to express the shock of an object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.”
In sharpening perception and expanding consciousness, art fosters a heightened awareness that inspires deeper, more intentional living with fresh eyes and an open mind and heart.
“Art is not an outside and extra thing; it is a natural outcome of a state of being… the object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.” – Robert Henri
A painting is not just an accurate drawing or a collection of well-executed rules, tips, and tricks we collectively agree make a “good” painting. “All paintings are human creations that are, in effect, self-portraits, either for the individual or as a species,” in the words of writer and artist Lincoln Perry. Artists make paintings for themselves AND for the widest possible audience of people who willing to engage with their works, and that is how art finds and create connection, wholeness, and community.
Larry Moore, “Background”
Creativity begins in feeling, being inspired, and seizing what’s around and within us, a state that artist and author Katie Swatland calls, “intense curiosity for all matter of existence.” It re-energizes life with excitement, fascination and meaning: art insists that what the eye sees, it embraces with curiosity and wonder.
The more you study and learn to appreciate art – what it is, where it comes from, how and why – the many purposes for which it’s made – the richer your inner life and the more passionate about making art – and living life – you may become.
Henri implores us to see ourselves as artists; to see ourselves as people who desire to create beauty, express truth as we understand it, in a spirit of solidarity, generosity, and goodness: “In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does is ‘art’ or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?”
If you’re looking for some inspiration – or the way to find YOUR work and your artistic voice – consider downloading “The Creativity Course” by Larry Moore.”
