Art may only exist, and the artist may only evolve, by completing the work.
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Carl Rogers said, "The personal is the universal." The personal is what makes art matter. Our point of view, not our drawing skills or musical virtuosity or ability to tell a story-Consider the difference between art and most other trades. In the arts, our filter is the defining factor of the work. In science or technology, the aims are different. The reason we create art isn't with the intention of making something useful for someone else. We create to express who we are.
Who we are and where we are on our journey.
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A point is an idea intentionally expressed. A point of view is the perspective-conscious and unconscious-through which the work emerges.
What causes us to notice a piece of art is rarely the point being made. We are drawn to the way an artist's filter refracts ideas, not to the ideas themselves. It's of no use to know your point of view. It's already there, working in the background, ever evolving. Efforts to portray point of view on purpose often lead to a false representation. We hold on to stories about our perspective that are inaccurate and limiting.
Wayne Dyer said that when you squeeze an orange, what comes out is orange juice. When you get squeezed, whatever comes out is what's inside you. And part of that extract is the point of view you don't even know you have. It's baked into the art you make and the opinions you share. Long after a work is completed, we may look back and understand our true point of view in it. We don't need to make a point of making a point. It will appear when it appears. The true point is already made in the innocent act of perception and creation.
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Much of art's greatness is felt on a gut level. Your self-expression allows the audience to have their own self-expression. If your work speaks to them, it is of no consequence if you are heard and understood. Set aside such concerns about whether your work will be comprehended. These thoughts can only cause interference, for both the art and audience. Most people aren't interested in being told what to think or feel. Great art is created through freedom of self-expression and received with freedom of individual interpretation.
Great art opens a conversation rather than closing it. And often this conversation is started by accident.
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Self-awareness is a transcendence. An abandonment of ego. A letting go. This notion may seem elusive, because in the same breath, it includes tuning in to the self and surrendering the self. Yet these are not as contradictory as they may seem. As artists, we are on a continual quest to get closer to the universe by getting closer to self. Moving ever nearer to the Point where we can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends. We're on a distant metaphysical journey from the here to the now.
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It's helpful to work as if the project you're engaged in is bigger than you.
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Think to yourself:
I'm just here to create.
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The most truthful and irrational aspects of ourselves are often hidden, and our access to them lies through the creation of art. Each work tells us who we are, often in ways the audience understands before we do. Creativity is an exploratory process to find the concealed material within. We won't always discover it. If we do, it may not make sense. A seed could draw us because it contains something we don't understand, and this vague attraction will be as close to knowing as we ever get. Some aspects of the self don't like to be approached head-on. They prefer to arrive indirectly, in their own way. As sudden glimpses caught in accidental moments, like sunlight glinting off the surface of a wave. These apparitions don't fit into words that can easily be expressed in ordinary language. They're extra-ordinary. Beyond the mundane. A poem can convey information that can't be transmitted through prose or conversation. And all art is poetry. Art goes deeper than thought. Deeper than the stories shout vourself. It breaks through inner walls and accesses
what's behind. If we get out of the way and let the art do its work, it may vied the sincerity we seck. And sincerity may look nothing like we expected.
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The goal is to get the work to the point that when you see it, you know it couldn't have been arranged any other way. There's a sense of balance. Of elegance. It is not easy leaving behind elements you've put so much time and care into. Some artists fall in love with all the crafted material to the point where they resist letting go of an element even if the whole is better without it. "Making the simple complicated is commonplace," Charles Mingus once said. "Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
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Ultimately, the act of self-expression isn't really about you. Most who choose the artist's path don't have a choice. We feel compelled to engage, as if by some primal instinct, the same force that calls turtles toward the sea after hatching in the sand
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This is the call to self-express, our creative purpose. It's not necessarily to understand ourselves or be understood.
We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.
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