Can there be a visceral, energy field that draws us, each individually, to art? To feelings elicited from seeing what is our own interpretation of what was the artist's expression? Is there a certain path that takes us along, like a Disney World ride, and delivers us, serendipitously, to those artists with whom we, as yet, unknowingly connect most?This is Smiling Spider, a charcoal drawing from 1881 by Odilon Redon, a French Symbolist painter, printmaker and draughtsman. I'm sorry, Smiling Spider!?! It is fantastical.
I fell in love with Redon's work perusing MOMA's collections one late night. I am pulled to his work. In a visceral, whole body way.
This is Underwater Vision (1910).
Imagine any art you remember or feel. Explore the artist and tell me what you learn about him or her and then yourself.
I created the title of this post without knowing exactly what I would say, or how it would come to be. It is how I try to make all of my posts. It is a circuitous route to the destination. Much like my life. But in my searches of his paintings, I found a book of his letters, then a quote. Then another. It all fit. It's too much to fit here.
While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.
My drawings inspire and are not to be defined. They determine nothing. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous world of the undetermined. They are a kind of metaphor.
