The Essences of Creation - Part 2

The slogan for UnGraven Image art originally was, “Changing the way we see the world one painting at a time.”

A member of the collector family, Debbye, suggested I make it picture, since the prints are included and I am beginning to make prints that are not reproductive. Since I have ideas also for sculpture and installations, the slogan should probably reflect that too. Perhaps in time the word “painting” will be replaces with “art works”.

Real art, whether visual, music or literature is inspired. Real creation on a human level is the act of bringing down the fire from the mountain. Great artists, scientists (check out what Einstein has to say) and others who have helped to change the world for the better with their ideas have almost all spoke of being inspired – of the Eureka moment(s).

Of course, one has to learn the basics of any discipline in order to understand and be able to do something with one's inspiration. Einstein knew how to do the math for the physics he brought us, Michelangelo knew how to chisel, Da Vinci knew how to paint, etc.

We learn from others, including masters who were gone long before we were born. The lessons we learn from others helps each of us find the unique path for our contributions. Often we can never imagine where our own inspiration will lead someone else.

I remember as a young girl, still in grade school thinking that van Gogh was drawing and paining somewhat in Morse code. We were studying about Morse code and the telegraph, which I understood to be dashes and dots and the work of van Gogh, especially many of the drawings are full of dashes and dots. I never mentioned this to anyone as I was embarrassed that I really had not studied as much as I was supposed to so I could not read the code. I assumed that the adults around me could read van Gogh's code.

Last winter the Metropolitan Museum in NYC presented a spectacular show of van Gogh's drawings. It was packed. The wait on line seemed forever but the crowd of diverse folk who had come from it seemed everywhere felt it was worth it.

It was worth it because van Gogh managed to bring down the fire and visually put it in such a way that it continues to reach and inspire others. His bold strokes and ability to convey the essence of an mage with dichotomies of frantic energy and tenderness, joy and pathos, and color with bold black and white.

Seeing the drawings, I recalled the moment when I was a young girl and thought van Gogh was painting using Morse code. I'd never told anyone that. As I grew older and more sophisticated I knew the idea was silly. Over time I had consciously forgotten it.

And yet, many years later I began to see Morse code as strokes thanks to van Gogh's inspired works. Now I paint using letters as strokes. Since the Torah (Bible) font letters are all made up of two letters, vav and yud in various combinations, I am painting with a kind of dash and dot (do some Google searches to see yuds and vavs).

Van Gogh's drawings appear almost sculptural to me. The space that surrounds his strokes, sometime s space made of other strokes, is vital to the energy and movement of a drawing. In many art classes I learned about perspective and how to create an illusion of space and form, however van Gogh's actual strokes visually insist on their form and place. His strokes define the space they take up.

For me, Vincent van Gogh continues to bring down the fire from the heavens. So do Rembrandt, Dali, Warhol, Chagall, El Greco, O'Keefe, Pollack and… well, it's a long list. My list seems to be the list that headlines the blockbuster museum shows.

There are artists who we are supposed to appreciate. They are clever. Many were technically excellent. Some bring huge sums of money at auction or in cutting edge contemporary galleries. Celebrity of living artists is rampant in the art world and it has always been so. Sometimes that celebrity is earned, at least in my opinion, as in their time (and some of ours) Warhol, Chagall, Dali and O'Keefe were well known.

Van Gogh was not well known, celebrated or revered in his lifetime. However, like the others mentioned above, he had a strong religious background and continued to be spiritually inclined for his whole life. His father was a pastor and van Gogh himself was a missionary. Although his subjects were not narratively religious he considered himself a religious painter.

Last week a gallery director was speaking to me about other artists she knows and has befriended who have a strong education but don't really know what to do, what artistic direction to take. They know how to paint but they lack inspiration. I understand this all too well. I was there for many years.

Art school, training, education teaches one how to climb the mountain and how to get back down off the mountain. Moses needed to be able to climb up Mount Sinai and get back down. He actually did it twice. But, climbing up the mountain, even reaching the top does not mean one has caught the inspiration, or to continue the metaphor, captured the fire, the vision that in some way, just as the Ten Commandments did, will inspire others and change peoples' lives. There are various mountains that are thought to possibly be Mount Sinai and they have all been climbed by people, even in our lifetime. Yet, no one but Moses brought down anything even slightly as meaningful as the Ten Commandments, which are the basis for much of the law of the Western world (and certainly the USA ).

Likewise there are many artists today who have as great an artistic training as Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Poussin, etc. Yet, one has to have a relationship with the Creator of the fire – and of the waters above and waters below to bring inspiration and a new way of seeing the world to others. As van Gogh did for me.

"I have a terrible need of - dare I say the word? - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars..." -- Vincent van Gogh

First part of the article: CLICK HERE