Transcript:
Work VS Play
Not everyone likes to draw, write, dance, or produce music, but everyone can appreciate entertainment. We all love to get lost in the fictional worlds of music, story, and four seasons of some binge worthy television series. But we also like to get things done and be useful. Who doesn’t feel the tension of having to choose between work or play? The utility of work is obvious. But why do we also feel the need to play? And for those of us who are creative, why art?
Maybe this question is too broad, so let’s narrow it down to, why draw? What does one gain by drawing? What is it about human beings that we find ourselves doodling in the corner of our notes when we should be fully engaged in a classroom lesson?
Cravings of Creatives Souls
Most creative people feel compelled to make art. We might not even know why we do it. We just have to create. We can try to stop, or maybe we tell ourselves that we have more important things to do, but if we go too long without creating it’s like we are denying our soul. Like a caged bird that isn’t allowed to sing. We have more pressing matters we tell ourselves. We have to work, we have family responsibilities. What is there to be gained by spending our important time on art?
Meaning Cannot be Found in Money
Money is a tool of exchange. It’s something you use to gain something else. Making money should always be secondary. As soon as making money becomes your primary purpose, your work begins to feel meaningless. So what is the higher purpose? If you can do work that is meaningful to you and meaningful to others, then the money will follow. But if your purpose is the pursuit of money you’ll always be chasing it, and it will continue to flee from you.
So again, why art? Why draw? It’s not because we have no other way of making images. Photographs are faster and far more accurate.
Drawing can be fun. But it can quickly get tedious. Perhaps we could argue that it is a skill, and developing skills makes you a better person. But is it a necessary skill? What does it make us better at?
Having done a lot of drawings, and having thought about this a lot over the years I can tell you what I have learned from drawing.
Drawing helps you to appreciate the beautiful complications of nature. Just as music can articulate such a specific moody emotional atmosphere in ways that words just simply cannot describe. Drawing helps us to really look at the world with fresh eyes.
Real art makes a statement about the world. Most people when they see an apple, they just think of it as an apple. Maybe they would draw it like a kindergartener as an awkward red circle with a green leaf and small stem. In fact, most of my high school students don’t draw any better than kindergarteners when they first begin my class. The only difference is kindergarteners draw without shame, but to draw no better than that as a high schooler is embarrassing.
When a true artist draws an apple, they stare at the apple and study it as if it were a strange complicated foreign object. The point of art is to notice the strange details, and render them in a beautifully appealing way so that others will notice too.
Neuroscience
To understand art it helps to understand the brain. We often think of ourselves as having one brain but in fact it is split into two simultaneous processors, the left and the right brain. We can see different parts of the brain light up when we do certain activities. This leads us to think that the left brain handles things like words and language, and that the right brain handles visual relationships and finding patterns in large seemingly chaotic amounts of data.
When you see out into the world you can see an overwhelming amount of visual detail. But really what you do is look. You ignore most of what you see, and narrow in on what is useful. How many people can remember the color of the walls of the last room they were in, or the patterns on the floor? How often can you remember what a person was wearing?
Our brains actually ignore most of what we see. And the few things we do notice–we strip down to the smallest descriptions and store them away as extremely simple shapes or words. Apple. Apples are red. They have a stem. This is the left side of your brain categorizing and labeling data and storing it in your database to be retrieved later. Humans, both terrible and amazing at Multitasking
So why do we doodle in our notes during lectures? The lecture is language. It’s your left brain that is listening. But your right brain is bored to tears. That’s why, if you really want to focus on the lecture with more of your brain, I suggest you draw simple images of what the lecturer is talking about in your notes. But sketch noting is a lesson for another day.
What does this tell us about art? Drawing is the art of making people truly look at and appreciate nature. Instead of simplifying this object as an apple, I’m going to draw it in all of its complicated shapes and forms. I’m going to make you notice how it’s not really red, or green, but a strange combination of blues, purples, browns, and with lime colored highlights. I will explode what you think you know into a thousand significant complications. And I will do it using form, perspective, value, and color in the same I would if I were depicting a spot on the wall, a hole in the dirt, a person’s portrait, or drawing the way a blanket folds and drapes over a couch.
We can introduce abstract ideas to the external details to illustrate their internal significance.
Drawing is a unique way of seeing the world. The artist makes you see the world with their lens. We point out its beauty. We can also depict its ugliness. We can introduce abstract ideas to the external details to illustrate their internal significance. The purpose is not to make money. The purpose is to express a unique observation and make people notice.
Art is the New Expression of Ancient Truths
Formal art training emphasizes form, value, color, and the principles of design. These are frameworks we can use no matter what we choose to draw. Whether drawing a still life, an animated character, a fantastical beast like a dragon, a landscape, a tree, or an abstract idea, we use the same traditional principles used by the old masters. The principles of design are not something everyone can easily see, but it is the deeper truth that you can see behind the surface if you train your eyes. But the first thing you have to do is stop seeing like a child who simply labels everything as apple, tree, or box. God is in the details. Truth is the unifying framework into which all things fit. Form and beauty is everywhere if you look for it.
Finding your Voice
The highest level artists are able to find their own unique voice. Their own unique way of seeing the world. They come up with their own unique observations, but they learn to express it using a new combination of those same old ancient formal techniques. The truth is not new, but your unique expression of it is. The truth that unites all of nature can be found in form, value, function, and beauty. That truth is the expression of God. So ultimately, the purpose of art is to find God through your own senses in your own unique way.
The Flow State
It’s also really fun to get lost in the process of doing art. As soon as people begin to draw, paint, play games, listen to or tell a story, or do any kind of performance, you immediately lose all track of time and get lost in the activity itself. You become less anxious. No one worries about the meaning of life or their existential crisis while trying to color in between the lines. You have a clear visible goal you are working towards and your mind and body have to collaborate to achieve it. The behavioural scientist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [me-high Cheek-sent-me-high], refers to this as the flow state. The flow state is not exactly a feeling of happiness, but it is the frame of mind in which you feel you are being optimally challenged while also making progress.
Why art? Ultimately, I suggest doing art for the following 3 reasons.
- Getting lost in the process is a vacation from the worries of life.
- Secondly, art helps us to appreciate both the uniqueness and the commonalities of God’s creation. You can find God through form.
- And third, Though it may seem at times useless and frustrating on the surface, what could feel more meaningful than finding your own unique form of self-expression? Your own unique path to God?
My teacher said that everything that moves is art. You are God’s greatest creation, so when you move, thou art.
