Volume 1. Chapter 8. Creativity

Seeing

Since we don’t try merely to copy the visible, art naturally tends toward the abstract. The more we realize ideal means, the less representational our work becomes.

Spacial energies

Vapors entwine to impinge on point, line, and plane, feverish, sultry, like a lost dog “in the thick of twilight.” Their energies pull and push, modulating the air and moving with uncertainty.

Movement

Both the creation and the experience take time in which hands and eyes in motion present an idea. The idea is in process, not in stasis.

Unseen truths

Visible and rational experience is limiting, like goodness without evil. The whole, which is unlimited and powerful, both masculine and feminine, everything and their complement, is the prototype of living things and the breath of creativity.

A man sails a boat

A man sails a small boat across a bay while a breeze fills his sail and the boat’s wooden structure displaces saltwater to slices through waves and buoy him above any concern about getting wet, confident in this contrivance that works to balance forces that he is ignorant of.

An apple tree blossoms

An apple tree blossoms in a great place for it. Sunlight, rain, soil and rock have nurtured it from a seed like the seeds it produces. Its roots are deep. Animals and years have gone by, and storms have spared it like the beetles that burrow into its bark but do not kill it.

A woman sleeps

A woman sleeps comfortably and doesn’t worry whether her breath will stop or her heart will beat. She has dreamed of floating. She has dreamed of falling. The corner of her eyes crust with salt. Her bladder fills with urine.

Universal

Art is another person’s mind, like your own, a universal means. Art is another’s soul that becomes your own. Art is a means of seeing and a means of living more than your own world and more than your own life.