The Essence of Life: Art
By: Amit Kumar
It gives meaning to your life and you will never be alone if you are an artist.
Art gives an inner peace of mind. From art you can search yourself and you can tell your life story, your thoughts, your vision through colors on canvas let everyday people find themselves by seeing the art.
In this frenetic world, people are forgetting about themselves and too many are running, often blindly, to earn a livelihood, earn money. Emotionally and tragically physically people kill and hate one another to chase after money. Art, alone, has the power to save our virtues. People must increase their awareness regarding art and explore and read the art and the visions of artists. Artists always create works which relate to society and culture en masse. It depends on individual thought as to what was actually visualized. Art serves as communication for the improvement of social relationships through greater understanding of human experience. Art is society’s greatest cultural university that is open to all.
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. –Pablo Picasso
Art is not just colors or thoughtless decoration. It is the feelings and emotions of artists who created works drawn from their souls with intentional meaning. After a work is completed, its interpretation is out of the artists’ hands literally. The viewing public can then see and gain insights by seeing their own lives in it and find solutions as well.
“Light and shadow, color and form, texture and intensity, representation and expression; these are the ways that art speaks to us”.
Ascetics is just one of the principles of art. Yet, what is pleasing to one person is not the same to another. Works by Hieronymus Bosch appear as if Salvador Dali was having a terrible day. Yet, both artist’s styles invite discussion, and provocation. To me this is the essential principle of art: provoke thought!
Putting brush in paint to canvas or whatever preferred medium is not the only art. There are many works of art that appear naturally: a rose, a waterfall, a magnificent mountainscape, an archway created by wind, rain and erosion, to mention but a few. In all its various glories, visual art is a feast for the eyes and soul. This is when the artist and the viewer are closest to each other. One having produced a work from the mind, the other determining its merits in theirs: a dialog of the minds.
Despite the perception that the skills to create art are innate – we are born with it – the practice, failures, learning from failure, the successes are all integrated due to the diligence of the artist. Trial and error is not innate, it’s takes many hours, years of study and practice. To aid in the dialog of the minds is creativity. The unspoken bond between artist and audience. The greater appreciation of art can be reinforced with education by the audience, but it is not essential. A higher level of education can help a viewer or critic articulate the merits or demerits of a work. But, the perception of beauty is not solely driven by education. In the end, it’s still a “gut feeling” regardless of how much or little schooling by the viewer.
An emotional transformation “takes over” the consciousness of an artist when working. Pulling on many emotional, mental and visceral threads, we go to that special place in our minds/souls to create art. Intentional or not, somewhat trance-like, there is a powerful meditative level that artists reach to produce our works.
The greatest service of art is the betterment of humanity by its astonishing power to communicate, to unite, to divide, however always stimulating communication. Which is quite amazing seeing as pictures do not talk or do they?
