Making art—Suzanne M Steiner
I am an artist and have been making and teaching art most of my life.. It is really who I am and in my senior years I realize that my personal philosophy about the act of creating a work of art is not about the skill of translating exact replica’s of Natures images, but rather making visible, the invisible joys, sorrows and wonders of life, fully experienced by the art maker.
The two following excepts seem to epitomize that concept for me and I share them with you. So much has been written about art on so many often quite opinionated levels. But art just IS and we know it not just when we see it, but when we feel it! And it can nourish us the viewer in many personal ways as it tells our story.
The first excerpt is from a book “Life, Paint and Passion” by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley. I used the book as a guide in teaching my class ”Artplay for Adults”, offered at the Cancer Caring Center for cancer survivors, of which I am one. Both the students and myself enjoyed this experience of making expressive art from our inner selves and being at one with both the media and the message.
“Paintings must be viewed on the same ground which they were created——their aliveness, their energy, their vulnerability—in order to be appreciated. The visible painting is just an echo of a much greater process. What is reflected in the forms, images, and colors is the by-product of a journey that has taken place on an inner landscape. The real painting has been created on the canvas of the psyche; the true artistic product is the personal transformation that has taken place within the painting experience itself.”
And secondly, I find the following, this offering by Muhammad Ali, in it’s simplicity so deeply inspiring.
“And so it has taken me all of sixty years to understand that water is the finest drink, and bread the most delicious food, and that art is worthless unless it plants a measure of splendor in people’s hearts”
Taha Muhammad Ali—1931-2011