In praise of art

Maybe i'm the last one to the party, but for the past few years, i've been obsessed by art: appreciation, craft, styles, history - the works. It seemed that everything i ever wanted to know or understand about life was encoded in a work of art. The myths, for instance, which were just stories in my childhood, taught me very elegantly about psychological forces: naivete, love, lust, power, changeability, order, fulfillment.

I left a desk job after 9-11 to pursue art. I didn't really care which kind, i just needed it, more than coffee. I was out of strength, out of courage, out of ideas, out of energy, and certainly out of joy. Living amidst thousands of mourning people, and dozens of burning manholes, and police vigilance against perceived further threats, was fundamentally exhausting.

On my first day of class, my painting teacher taught us to simply enjoy mixing oil paints with the spirits and stand oil on our pallettes. Basic stuff. What a wonderful, oozy feeling just to tease the palette knife around, waiting for the right consistency. White became off-white, and sand, and putty, and taupe. We used big clumsy brushes to capture, for the first time ever, some perspective on a seated skeleton. As one who so often rushed from project to project, I was drawn wondrously into the land of the slow. I had to stop, and notice, how DID that spinal vertebrae hook up with the rib? And how big was the pelvis compared to the rib cage? And how, exactly, did that bony hand bend at the wrist? How did the colors of the bones change subtly, according to placement and breaks of light, so that i, too, could convey their movement through space? The order, the proportion, the orchestration and symmetry gave me a surprisingly strong jolt of appreciation for the loveliness of the human form. And this was before skin! And the light! Wow! To notice the fall and shift of light and shadow! What a wondrous world! I painted and noticed. I noticed again, that all these bones needed to exist in a context. Where was the horizon line? What was the true background? What artistic license could i bring in to set these lovely bones in a useful context? What color, what depth, might show off this frail new friend? Where did those three hours go, i wondered?

Since that first class, I've been as obnoxious as a religious convert, noticing and experimenting with all the arts. Drawing taught me about shadow and subtleties of expression. Mosaic taught me about putting pieces together - a great idea after things in life have broken. Drama taught me about the flow of feeling, and the build and release of tension. Stories taught me about how fundamentally we need and benefit from scripts.

I used to think that the divine was somewhere else. Now, art has taught me that i am surrounded by a dazzling array of wisdom and beauty, if i will only slow down to take part.