Art and Artists

Art and Artists

The place where I usually work balances on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. As I dream up stories, write and edit, I can look out over a scene of unimaginable beauty. The far shore of Conception Bay is a little over ten kilometers away. That granite shoreline is different every day. There are times when it looks close enough to touch and others when the horizon is shrouded in a wall of white softness. The ocean itself changes from mirror-like stillness to ferocious intensity of motion. As if this wasn’t enough, there are two islands just offshore to add another layer of interest.

The sky is different every time I look out the window. Great conglomerations of white may scuttle above the seascape or wisps of cotton may sit motionlessly above the water.

A few days ago, I looked out to see a perfectly blue sky. It’s a bit of a rarity here and I spent some time just letting the colour soak in. As I watched carefully, I noticed how the blue of the heavens changed with the distance from the horizon. Down near the far shore, the sky was bleached to almost white. The intensity of the blue gradually increased as I looked up.

The shifting blue reminded me of a watercolour. Painters love this kind of subtle gradation of hue. So many landscapes are celebrations of the shades of the sky.

Why are artists interested in something so ordinary as the colour of a cloudless horizon? I think that question is a good start into the whole issue of what art is.

The artist who paints a cloudless scene is fascinated by the way the colours change. What at first glance seems to be a monochromatic oneness becomes a thing of complexity and beauty. The thrill of the experience is so intense that it must be shown to others.

I think all of us can relate to the desire to share wonderous experiences. When we travel without our loved ones, we wish that they could be there to see the unusual things we have experienced. Something is missing when we see a bear or whale or beautiful flower and have no one to share it with.

Perhaps that is what art is. A desire to share the unusual.

As painters, photographers, musicians, and writers we have an urge to show something to others. That something can be unusual in itself, or an ordinary thing we have an unfamiliar experience with.

If we communicate a story that is ordinary and don’t add anything to the telling to make it interesting, I’m not sure that we’ve produced art.

It could be argued that something like Andy Warhol’s tomato soup cans didn’t make any attempt to be interesting or add anything to the cans themselves. But this is where it gets complicated. Seeing something in an extremely ordinary way can be interesting. If an artist can produce something that provokes a response that the work is unusually ordinary, it can be art. This is likely the stimulus for much of minimalism.

Artists are driven to tell stories. Writers may be the most obvious of raconteurs, but painters, dancers and singers have stories they share as well.

A story is more than just the reporting of ordinary life. Real stories tell of an individual’s perception of a bit of the world that is in some way interesting and unusual. Art is a way to share those experiences and an artist is a person who is driven to find the fascinating parts of the world and show them to others.