ART AND ILLUSION
Painting fascinates me for many reasons. Primarily, I
suppose, I like the colours and shapes of things. For example, I love
certain colours and my love for them increases the more I use them or gaze
at them. It is as if I am pre-sensitised to them in a peculiarly karmic
manner. I especially like all blues, especially paler blues and those that
blend into violet, green or silver. I loved the colour blue even as a very
young child. Skies and clouds have an equal fascination as subjects, and
have the advantage of constantly changing too. But the chief reasons I
like art are more complex than mere aesthetics. These reasons are firstly
that being able to create things and copy things is very validating,
joyous and addictive. It is a joyous and uplifting activity which makes
you feel good. That is the joy of the creative person. Apart from that
there comes a sense of power over the materials one uses and this can lead
one to a sense that forms are not fixed and solid as we see them at all,
but are in fact malleable and to a worrying extent illusions.
Personally, I am more interested in the illusory aspect
than in the power. One of the great things about all art is being able to
make things by ‘happy accident’ and through one’s dialogue with chaos and
accident. Making nice things by accident is often far more satisfying than
making them through skill. It is as if the skill invades at certain
moments just like an outsider, and just for a moment, and then it has
gone. Like a visitation from another world. I know the same feeling from
fixing cars: some days everything goes right, but other times every bolt
or nut is difficult and only bad things happen! The creative moment is so
sensitive and occurs when it occurs; it cannot be forced to arrive. So a
subtle dialogue is established between the creative person and the
creative process.
The illusory nature of reality is potently visible in
all forms of art. Firstly, because the artist simplifies the outer world,
takes from it what s/he finds and uses only certain parts of it,
discarding the rest. Secondly, knowing how to recreate light and shade,
forms, the plumpness of objects, perspective, etc., teaches one that the
outer world is less powerful and fixed, less rigid than we commonly
suppose, and that in fact in a strange sort of way we have unearthed for
ourselves some of its secrets and we can use that knowledge ourselves.
That is what an artist does. Being an artist is a powerful thing: it gives
you command over land, sea and air, like a military commander, like a God!
It gives you a divine status because in less than ‘7 days and 7 nights’
you can create new worlds. Indeed, in only a few minutes you can create
worlds. And you are their commander in chief! You can destroy them at will
or construct images of painful and intoxicating beauty. That is art. And
the excitement, the bliss, the ecstasy or thrill of art is found in all
these aspects of it. It is such an engaging pursuit.