To own a piece of art is not to own a piece of decoration, it is to own something soulful.
Nowadays, there are shelves and shelves of mass produced art and all kinds of decorations available out there. That is one reason why many think that it is shallow for an artist to be motivated to create a work of art simply because he or she was struck by beauty. They often see that type of art as shallow, as merely a decoration. However, I think this is a misunderstanding and here is why.
We are all human. We all think in human ways. Although we need basic neccessities to survive and we like to own our useful things that are a bit upgraded, or quality, like for example a room with a pretty wall color, or a fancy car, we are also very emotional beings who need a different kind of nourishment, and that nourishment is love. Our lives are lived through emotion, the connection to other human and non human beings, or even things like our job or hobbies.
That is why when I hear a song somewhere, it is not only about if the artist sang it correctly. It is mostly about the emotion that they decided to bring forward. It is the humanness and vulnerability that really speaks to us through music and art and it makes it feel magical and comforting. Someone out there, for some reason felt motivated to create a song. Who knows what it was that inspired that person. But it sure was something strong. That makes all the beauty we perceive in the song suddenly have meaning. And it is the same with other kinds of art. This is also why people love to know something about the artist themselves, and it is up to the artist how much they reveal.
The artist might be inspired to paint a particular location because it is somehow significant to their life. When an artist sees something beautiful, they might just feel something they can´t explain. And that is why art like that is definitely valuable. I say this as an artist who is inspired by so called visual beauty myself. People often feel this, I think, but they maybe then talk themselves out of it because of the ideas they have absorbed about art that is „only beautiful and nothing else“.
I think that art is a great way to display and experience the jewel that lies in humanness and in us being magnificent souls, through all the mundaneness and even ugliness that gets wrapped around us. Through art, we can touch that magnificence, feel it, see it.
So to own a piece of art is not to own a piece of decoration, it is to own something soulful, because the artist utilized their soul to create it. And we do want something soulful, don´t we?
Let me know your comments on this and thank you for reading. If you already aren´t, you can subscribe to my mailing list to recieve blog posts like this and see my new artworks in the future.
The image I used at the beginning of this short article is an artwork by the british artist Richard Cartwright. The name and year is unknown.
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