“The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke”
Jerzy Kosinski - author of "Being There"
Have you ever stopped to think why some photographs, some paintings, some digital creations move you even though you'd swear you didn't like that style of work at all. Or perhaps the piece wasn't even technically all that good...yet you loved it enough to say so or maybe even enough to buy it. I used to say that about a number of genres of art and writing that I just love today.
I think that's because as I've developed myself as an artist, I've come to appreciate more than the real effort that goes into creating something of beauty or meaning. It's certainly about more than time or effort - it's about how much heart the artist has invested in his/her expression. I don't think it's coincidental that the word art is found within the word heart. I've said to people who tell me their work is not technically perfect that I'm not very interested in what they see with the lens of their cameras or the lens of their eye, but rather, I'm looking beyond that to grasp what it is they saw with the lens of their hearts. I've heard photographers themselves express this a bit differently - "having fancy cameras and equipment doesn't make one a photographer - that depends on the person behind the camera." That's true...just as owning about 500 very expensive paintbrushes doesn't make me Vermeer! It's really a matter of the heart.
For example, if you'd asked me a few years ago whether I'd ever buy an abstract painting, I'd have said, "Ewww, no way!" And then I met artists like +Art by SharonCummings and +Lenore Senior and I've done a complete about face in that regard. Their abstract paintings are pure heart. Or consider an artist like +Lincoln Rogers whose values pour out of his heart and into his artwork as readily as water from a tap. Or fractal artists (a genre I first thought was just computer doodling) like +Heidi Smith and +Deborah Benoit whose works literally sing that "this is from the heart." Maybe it was a style of poetry or story-writing I'd never believed I could appreciate fully - and then I discovered the brilliant story-telling and mystical poetry of +LisaJewell and now I wait with exquisite anticipation for her next blog post. It's unfair of me to mention only a few talented people here but hopefully in the coming weeks and months, I'll get to many more of the amazing artists who work with their hearts as well as their hands and heads. These are just some of the artists I've come to admire and appreciate while I've poured my own heart into becoming a member of the heART club with digital creations and poetry like this:
See the image and accompanying poem "In the Shattering" at
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