Creating art is like translating the life around us into a language that others can understand. It chases beyond mere physical replication to speak to something deeper than the mind’s eye. Art appeals to the truths that our souls understand, speaks to the eyes of the heart where the really important stuff is processed and turned and contemplated until it is ready to come forth in the way we live. All of the arts- music, dance, the written word, are powerful in this way. Art reaches to the core of our being without our practical and pragmatic minds even realizing what is happening.
To speak this language in our art is to observe the world in a different way. It is to see beyond the surface, to contemplate it and to let it emerge on stage, canvas, or page. We may not even fully understand it ourselves, but the message is there. Art is successful when others understand that message in a way that impacts and changes who they are. Perhaps even more, art is successful when it changes even the artist, exposing truths they did not before realize.
In Weapons of Mass Creation, I used an “art panel” made from a cardboard box covered with book pages. I stuck on red vinyl letters, and then painted over it in dark tones- perhaps addressing the dark issues of the world that can be understood, expressed, and even healed through art. The tools of art, the “weapons” of creation, are represented by a digitally modified version of my own favorite glass water pot and brushes.
For more information about this original piece of art, go to: https://www.etsy.com/listing/125566406/mixed-media-art-panel-weapons-of-mass?
Artfully Imperfect
This is a great piece! Wonderful idea to repurpose the box!