Paint Your Song with Words of Love and Tragedy

This week we return to the she said/he said format. The topic – the inspiration behind what makes art — art.

SHE SAID:

Our memory is fickle and impermanent. With each passing day, we forget details or embellish our lives stories. Nothing lasts forever, not our loved ones nor the most important moments in our lifetime, not the ones who make us laugh and not the ones who make us cry.

The only way our history endures is through art and the sharing of it. Whether by storytelling, painting, photography or sonnet – art brings meaning to our existence.

Art grants us permission to see beauty in the muck that is living. But, can art be created in the plenitude of comfort, ease and peace? 

Can art come to the mind of the creator when the belly is full and angst quieted? There are some who will say this is an impossibility; the very absence of hunger is lackluster passion and anything but inspiration. 

I disagree.

I believe that art can be conceived in soft tender spaces, places devoid of the rough edges that have driven many a creative mind to madness.

Art can be inspired by the magnificence of love just as easily as by the tragedy of it.

The very act of being a human being provides sufficient fodder to illuminate the most contented mind.

HE SAID:

You are wrong!

As Shakespeare wrote – “one fire burns out another’s burning, / One pain is lessened by another’s anguish … One desperate grief cures with another’s languish: / Take thou some new infection to thy eye, / And the rank poison of the old will die.”

I unequivocally and unapologetically believe art emanates from the despaired soul, the shattered heart, the bewildered brain, and a desire to alter all which stills. Its appendages spread and entangle until you are forced to address its presence. It consumes the bounty and the morsel. It gulps and sips from any available elixir.

Arts architect is anguish; its carpenter is courage; its designer is yearning; and its inspector is conviction. Creativity does not have to be incarcerated by hopelessness, but without craving the artistry which emerges is often superficially constructed.

While many contend imagined conceptions can flourish in the midst of comfort, history has shown us this form of optimism is a way to escape not invent.

Did You Know (her take)? “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”  ~ Frida Kahlo

Did You Know (his take)? In the case of major depression, the population rate is about 5% but the rate among artists and writers in various studies shows it is between 25% and 50%.