The semester is about over and so much has been thought and done and in such intense level that it's hard to really figure it all out and try to describe.
It has been a good search for inner developments and understanding. Some good talks, some good reads, and a lot of painting. Today though, watching a classmate paint, I felt connected to her working mode, struggling with her own artistic challenges, and then for a brief moment I disconnected from that (who knows how creepy I looked with my eyes on her painting and my brain traveling at light-speed around space and time).
The thought process got to a stage of me understanding a little more why it is that I'm so attracted to such a traditional medium of painting such as oils. Why do I enjoy so much the classical idea of art and it's uniqueness, it's feelings of moment, of the artists' emotions and so forth. There are so many special new things that we've gotten used to deal with every day, digitized forms of art and information that could easily be used to create, deliver and enjoy visual and other types of art. So why stay in the past?
I am in no way against technology. Actually i'd be sort of spitting on the plate that I eat if I were to ever say that I'm against technological innovations. And I think it is exactly because I'm always seeing both the new and the traditional as positive possibilities that it becomes an exciting moment to realize what I did today.
It is only natural of human beings to seek connection. I believe that the ultimate form of connection between human beings is love. Love is a condition that requires action, thought, reason, respect and emotion. I would never say that a website like Facebook is actually a fake way of connecting to other individuals, but I have to say it's incomplete, because it doesn't allow the full experience of being, sharing, relating to one another that actual human interaction will provide, or allow. It's always up to our talents, abilities, knowledge and other human experiences to provide us with connection to others and to the world around us. Reality is perception, and the more we perceive ourselves in others and in everything, the more connected we are, the more real we feel.
On a similar note, I'd like to add a thought on feelings that I had along with this. To try and understand, to explore and expand our feelings, we're not as much getting rid or forgetting our logic, but we're searching for new ways to solve our logical problems with a part of our brain that we don't fully understand, but we trust it and know that in many situations it has helped us do the right thing. I trust whoever trusts their guts, because I can relate with that, and therefore I do that in my art and I trust and enjoy seeing that in people's works.
So connecting requires well developed rational and emotional parts of us to be willing to explore and to find ourselves in others and let others see themselves in us. As a painter, I am not against using digital media to create, and there are many digital artists that I truly admire, my preference for oil paint lies in it's uniqueness. But regardless of the media, of the type of art or whatever product being sold or person you're meeting, the will to connect is the start of a dialogue that could fulfill both parts' interests, and the more truthful it is, the more personally and fully you're able to show yourself, your product, your art, the stronger that connection will be, if it's meant to.
