Art. Artistic expression is very personal. If you want to know someone, to know their passions or desires, look to their art. Find their artistic outlet and study it; the lyrics of a song, the subject in a picture, the style, medium, or subject of a painting, or the story or line in poetry or literature. Looking at a creation, one can find the deepest heart cry of the artist.
I love that writing can be either completely transparent or so complicated it is nearly in code. A successful piece of art conveys some emotion that the writer or artist was feeling at the time, or an emotion they want the audience to feel about their subject. Like a song that makes you cry or want to dance, a line of poetry that brings laughter or quiet to a room, a painting that takes your breath away and you can’t think of why.
I was looking at a color stain painting. It was just color, that was all. As I looked at the splotches and squares of color, warmth flowed over me. The artist was able to share his feelings with me without a word or even a clear picture. I have never seen or met the artist and he was able to share an emotion, a feeling with me.
In that lies the amazing power of art. Sometimes the content of a poem has nothing to do with the way it makes you feel when you read it. The tone conflicts with the words as if the writer was conflicted and confused and they expressed it onto paper.
It never ceases to astound me. There I am, feeling what they felt years later and miles apart from them. Sometimes the feeling is so subtle that you only vaguely notice, other times it fully pierces your consciousness and you are rushed by a passion that was in the hand of the artist as they created.
In the immortal words of Picasso, “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them?" Why try to understand art? Art is to be felt, not understood. It is wonderful to be an artist, because, by creating something, a song, a painting, a poem, a sculpture, I am sharing myself. I am taking an inexpressible emotion and releasing it into the air.
Writing is an art form. With it you can do with words what artists do visually. This is what draws me so much to creative writing. It is the words part of the art work. Being an artist sometimes a story will come from my art and sometimes my art comes from a story. So my writing and my art go hand in hand. From this comes my passion for writing that nearly rivals my passion for drawing.
