Is good art defined by awards or competitions? Can it be recognized by how often it appears in magazines, on television, or in newspaper articles? Certainly, popular art is tagged by such criteria, but, think about it, how many popular French portrait, landscape, and still life artists have been forgotten, while those ridiculed by contemporaries--the Impressionists, are remembered. Was Van Gogh not an artist because he won no awards? How about Gauguin? Was Emily Dickinson not a poet because she was not published in her lifetime?
Defining true art is not that easy. We, as artists, work without a net. We cannot depend on the opinions of contemporaries because, if we are doing our work, we are seeing in NEW ways. We are defining the ways others will see in the future. Actually, we are recognizing what has gone unrecognized and pointing out what remains unnoticed.
People may not understand us, at first. Perhaps, some other artists will know us. This is a very lonely thing, but it cannot be helped. If you are meant to be an artist and you neglect it, at a certain point in your life, everything will be hollow. The world will be filled with noise, and the hunger for silence.
If you are called to be an artist and you do not listen, you will plunge into an abyss as real as hell, where all feeling is lost, and cries go unheard.
Being an artist is not something you can deny in modesty. You cannot deny it at all. Without this purpose, there is no joy, no comfort. There is no water in the soul's desert. There is no garden.
If you would be an artist, but you can deny it, and live, then you should deny it. Art is a merciless master, but, for the artist, Art is also a lover, sweetbreathed, and gentle as a summer night filled with stars.
As artists, we have experienced the mystical state of seamlessness. It is our task to provide a taste of that state to those hungry for it. We must resist partial definitions of who we are, and why we are here. What we do is vital.
So many people are seeking satisfaction in unsatisfying places. They are looking for what art should provide, but is not providing, because we are busy looking for grants and prizes. We are poets, speakers, teachers, musicians, craftsmen, gardeners, dancers, and photographers. We have something to share. It is the center.
Silence
I searched on mountaintops,
in lonely deserts,
by the roaring sea,
but I could not find it
I could not
find it.
There was noise everywhere;
the roar of engines
the static of talk
until, in the middle of a brushstroke,
all the desperation
fell away.
Within the four sides
of canvas, all was quiet,
all was still.
Woven together,
endlessly layered,
all the world
all of time
all at once.
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Contributor's Note
I am a freelance writer and painter. My first collection of freelance contemporary verse was published by Bellowing Ark Press, Shoreline, WA, in 1995. I have a few copies left, if you are interested.
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