Art as Presence

I have two grandsons and both of them are artists!   My painting ability is nil  --it was a laughing stock when I was in the 7th grade at Eugene Field School and my tree was held up as an example of how NOT to draw a tree.  I still hate that teacher!    Yesterday my grandson, Colin Dyer, who is graduating from SCAD this month, sent his latest commission on Facebook.  It is a painting of the late "Godfather of Soul" James Brown, the musician, whose birthday was celebrated and recognized.

I loved it!   I could not begin to understand the intricacies of such a composition but I can look at it and in one moment, decide if I like it.  And I do!

Art has long signified the presence of God.  Long before photography had come into its own as an art form, people had painted images from their own interior soul.   Many of these were Biblical scenes which permeate our thinking of what constituted that episode on that day so far away in time and space.   Most of us have grown up picturing the Virgin Mary as Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassaferrato painted her.   The copy of the painting was an attachment in my first complete Bible and as far as I was concerned, it was the gospel. 

  The Madonna in Sorrow

 Painting allows the painter and the artist of any medium to express creative ideas in their own way.  Benedetto Croce, the Italian idealist philosopher,  wrote in his essay, "What is Art" that one could define art as vision or intuition.  So who would be damaged mentally if I painted the Virgin Mary in an entirely different way  --maybe she would look more American or maybe she would have an evident flaw in her complexion!

Some have said that there is an inner artist in all of us.   May we find the courage to find our own freedom of expression....and may we ignore a teacher in the seventh grade who does not understand how we could see a tree as a series of giant protruding sticks, bigger at the bottom.  It is all in the eye of the beholder!