Call & Response

The Third Response: Picture Within a Picture — Jessica

The popular phrase “trust the process” has always grated on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. And now, thanks to Cheryl’s observation in her last post, I know why! I also know why I just can’t get into the whole art journal thing — even though I love to watch them being created on YouTube.

I do see a vision in my mind and then attempt to bring it to reality, you are very correct in that assessment, Cheryl. However, it doesn’t spring fully-formed like Diana from my forehead. Rather, it is born as an idea or feeling that I want to share. Then, as I allow it to roll around it begins to take shape in a visual way. Once that vision begins to take place, then I can pick up the camera and attempt to capture it — pin it down in reality. That may still require a dozen or so shots, but when I am more focused, I feel more successful.

I can’t just start with raw materials and then form something. I guess that’s the more inductive, intuitive type of thinking and it just leaves me frustrated. Hence my inability to do anything with the art journal. I spread some paint and stamp some stamps and then wonder, “what now?” With such limited time to create, I have to have a plan in order to accomplish anything. At least to my way of thinking.

Part of the reason it has taken me so long to write this response, is that the other quotes that Cheryl shared led me down a long rabbit hole: thomism and art. To keep that from sounding overly pretentious, let me share this quote from Jacques Maritian:

St.Thomas,who was as simple as he was wise, defined the beautiful as that which being seen pleases, id quod visum placet. These four words say all that is needed: vision, that is to say, intuitive knowledge and joy. The Beautiful is that…

The key, I think to all of your questions, Cheryl, is in the last quote you shared: “to share.” RAW, JPEG, iphone, dslr…those are only tools. Tools that the artist manipulates to produce a vision or message to share. Whether the vision drives the work or the work drives the vision is neither here nor there. The work becomes art when it has that message to share. Art then is a communication of something. As a Christian artist, I hope to communicate the beauty (and truth) of the Creator.

And here, I’ll close with (Saint)John Paul the Great:

Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
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Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.