Up: [[Visual Arts]] Created: 2022-02-08 ### 1. Art tells us who we are > [!Orbit] Peter London in *No More Secondhand Art* > Art can be said to be— and can be used as — the externalized map of our interior self. > [!Orbit] Rick Rubin in *The Creative Act* > 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 ware and where we are on our journey….Whatever our perspective, so long as we share it, unaltered and undoctored, we succeed in art’s fundamental purpose. When making art, we create a mirror in which someone may see their own reflection. (p. 178) > [!Orbit] Rick Rubin in *The Creative Act* >In the end, the sum total of the essence of our individual works may serve as a reflection. The closer we get to the true essence of each work, the sooner they will somehow, at some point in time, provide clues as to our own. (p. 245) ### 2. Art lets us express how we feel and thus feel better > [!Orbit] [[Julia Cameron]] in *Walking in this World* > Enlightened therapies urge us to ‘accept how we feel.’ Art teaches us to express how we feel and so alchemize it. (p. 62) ### 3. Art focuses us on the beauty of the fleeting moment > [!Orbit] Elizabeth Alexander in *The Light of the World: a memoir* > Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescence extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave. (p. 165) ### 4. Art grows our soul > [!Orbit] Lawren Harris > Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is a high training of the soul, essential to the soul’s growth, to its unfoldment. ### 5. Art allows us to step away from chaos and pay attention in the moment > [!Orbit] Twyla Tharp > Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. > [!Orbit] Saul Bellow > I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. ### 6. Art lets us join in the world’s unfolding > [!Orbit] [[Mary Oliver]] from an essay in *Upstream* > In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labour requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities. > [!Orbit] Pam Grouting > Serving an art fulfills our deepest needs to be heard, to be visible, to shout a holy ‘yes’ to the miraculous that’s every day around us. ### 7. Art helps us feel fully alive > [!Orbit] Frederick Franck > Art is a way of being. > [!Orbit] John Updike > What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit. > [!Orbit] Madeleine L’Engle > Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive. > [!Orbit] Robert Rauschenberg > Painting is the best way I’ve found to get along with myself. > [!Orbit] Karla McLaren in *Embracing Anxiety* > Art is the image rich way you express your truth in the outer world.