Today’s musing started from a Lynda Barry interview on Wisconsin Public Radio. Barry is a force for Real Creativity and living a genuine life. I love what she says and writes. It is inspiring to get in that mode and what it is about — about process and perception — not about judging and the inner critic. Her way is about getting past “good” and “bad” — Hey, that can be our way too.

Lately I’ve been thinking instead of being in the mind (bind) of good/bad — to instead feel, get connected, and sense when art has that connection and is real and alive. Instead of asking of my work or someone else’s work, “Is it good?” I’m starting to ask, “Is it honest?” Does it come from a genuine feeling of the artist? I think this is what I’ve always responded to, but intuitively. Now I’m starting to identify what the unqualified “it” was in a work that made me feel excited about viewing it. (or in the case of a poem, story, or book, excited about reading it) Can’t you feel the difference when someone is trying to give the audience what they want? Blah, blah, blah. It is boring, dead, sad, lifeless. What about when the artist or writer is impassioned about what they share? Even if I don’t agree or jive with that artist’s vision, I will feel more energy from the work.

This morning I read a sentence that I really liked in the I-Ching — “Make a sincere attempt to meet the social responsibility of the artist, which is: Reuniting people with their reality.”

Isn’t that what art is for? — for perceiving and connecting — and sharing perceptions — and then other people getting the communication?  Now we may see something in a way we didn’t see before because we’ve experienced it through art, through someone else’s eyes and shared experience. I think as an example of the orange glow in many Maxfield Parrish paintings. I first saw that glow in a Parrish painting, then I started seeing it Everywhere.

I am coming not to care about the “Game” of art — the heirarchy of who is important and who is not (the stars and dots that are handed out to people — the popularity contest of it all) I don’t think Maxfield Parrish is critically acclaimed. He is probably seen as an illustrator, not a fine artist. I don’t care. I see the color in a sunset differently because of his work.

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