Fledgling attempts to be attentive
In my wife’s last year of college, our first year of marriage, we lived in a student-housing duplex adjacent the campus. She was an Art Education major, and I had the privilege of her art professor becoming a sort of mentor to me. He was gentle, but tough; patient, yet persistent. I learned about a perspective on creating art — the why of creating art — that I haven’t heard talked about by many others, especially non-artists.
A lot of people have this idea that art is created merely to impress the artist or their audience. Look what I can do! And a lot of people looking at art walk away with the impression that their 3-year-old could have done that or better.
It seems comparatively easy for an artist to answer the who, what, where, and how of art making. Answering why is another story altogether. It is, I would argue, the most difficult question to answer in art making. It requires us to think beyond mere subject, technique, style, form, light, energy, etc. It requires us to embrace ideas and philosophies on a level of defense or simple curiosity.
This new-to-me perspective on why we make art is that of asking and exploring questions — through curiosity, wonder, and yearning to know the world and creation on a level deeper than our capitalistic society gives us, through means of image making, form construction, writing, music, etc.
Consider this from Milton Glaser:
For me, drawing has been the most fundamental way of engaging the world. I’m convinced that it is only through drawing that I actually look at things carefully, and the act of drawing makes me conscious of what I’m looking at. If I wasn’t drawing, I sense that I would not be seeing.
When I read this I am reminded of my wife’s senior art project (photo above). She spent countless hours in her studio drawing little seed pods in charcoal on grand scale. It was a means of knowing these tiny life-givers as more than mere passersby, more than their byproduct. It had not to do with impressing people. (Although, both herself and others are indeed impressed by the work.) It had not to do with artist ego. It had not to do with hopes of “selling out” and moving into commercial work. It was curiosity, wonder, and yearning; asking, seeking, knocking. It was a matter of seeing with new eyes, understanding with a new mind.
I make no claim of being among image makers that are capable of answering the question of why in a worthwhile or satisfactory manner. I do, however, hear the question, and know that it ought to be answered.
Why dear artist?
