Saturday, May 20, 2006

Pamela and Warren and Art

Until the November day that Pamela walked into my life I thought Art was something you bought at the department store to hang above the sofa, like the blue toned gilt framed landscape my mom bought at Strouss Department Store. I wasn't totally in the dark, I knew there was "great art" created by someone else, usually a long time ago. I even had a vague idea about contemporary art, but again, art was stuff created by someone else, and certainly not by anyone I knew.

But that was before Pam and her pastel and foil drawings and her stories and, most importantly, before she informed me that artists, like her, saw the world differently (magically) , than non-artists (like me). My wounded ego and already stunted creative spark had to agree, however reluctantly, that she was right.

Only, she wasn't.

But I didn't know this until much later when Warren opened the doors and windows (literally) with stories and light (figuratively) and returned me out to nature with an open and loving heart. I learned that seeing through artist eyes, is a learned, or rather, an unlearned skill. It is all about turning off what you think you see and focusing (softly) on what you really see before you in all its impossible and imperfect glory. When you do this, when you are truly present, shadow and light and color break apart to meet in patterns so beautiful that you have to take up an instrument to share your impression of this transitory meeting.

Our souls need art in all its forms to give voice, no matter how small, to the divine. Our souls ask that we use all our senses to experience the world; to translate the composite picture our brains tell us that we see, in to the the essence of what is really before us. The natural world with its ever changing light, color and movement is the perfect studio. No artificial borders, the feet on the earth, the body fluid, the eyes move, perspective changes, the body moves, the hand finds its rhythm and the image flows onto paper.

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