Art is what defines my life, and I don’t just mean as a writer. I mean the core of art—the purpose of its existence and the way existence births it.
Do you imagine art to be a colorblock Piet Mondrian hung alone on a white wall in a museum? A grueling three months spent in the studio to produce a most detailed oil painting? Or a lengthy novel constructed inside a castle nestled in the Scottish highlands?
Sure, it is all of that, but also so much more.
Art is existence. It is the expression of life, of love, of being. To live is to experience the greatest piece of art ever created. Art is the blessing we have to experience the entirety of what it is to live, and it is simultaneously the force that granted us this blessing. You may call it God, or the Universe, or neither of those, but that is what art is, to me: the beautiful coincidences, the habits we form, the complex manner in which we experience living.
It is not limited to physical brushes touching canvas or words inked on a page or instruments united to harmonize in communion, yet it is still all of that.
I believe the declaration of “artist” is assigned to us all at birth. I think we are artistic in nature—it is the gift of a higher power. You can try to make art, or you can’t, but either way, you don’t necessarily have a choice but to be part of it. Beautiful? I think so.
What about the Duchamp of it all, you may ask? The flipped urinal may have frustrated you in that GE art history class you took in college. Did you wonder why your professor chose to educate you about this porcelain appliance rather than anything else? Hate to add to your frustration, but that’s art, too. The toilet? Expression. You can catch modernism in all the nooks and crannies of that toilet. The holes arranged in a symmetrical triangle, the turning-upside-down of the toilet mirroring society, the necessity for something never been done before at the advent of the changing world.
There is that classic statement of assertion: “I could do that.”
Yes, you can, and you should. Create without expectation, create to surpass boundaries, for it is all artistic.
The undefinable force that overcomes you—inspiration—appears and overwhelms at random because of the fact that art is everywhere. It is the “drawing” you scribbled in crayons on your newly painted door as a toddler; it is cutting up the vegetables in order from red to purple so you can admire the rainbow on your cutting board before tossing them into the salad bowl; it is the way cream forms tendrils of white that crawl into your morning coffee. It is dancing with strangers in communion under blue and pink lights in the dark room of a stuffy bar, the way everyone’s moves are seemingly unconnected until you step back and watch them all flow. The drunk dancers are artists.
Inspiration is the heart and soul of art, and it is not only available to a select few.
Ha. That made me smile. "I could do that." "Do it, then."