Time Reverberation— At the Gmeiner Art Center— Show Ends Today!
Imagination, as opposed to fantasy, is the ability to see the other thing, what one might call, to use those old-fashioned words, nature, reality, the world… Imagination is a kind of freedom, a renewed ability to perceive and express the truth.
–Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997)
I wrestled with this passage from author Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) for quite a while. It has been sitting in a draft file for several years with just this passage on the page. I was pretty sure I understood its meaning. Art is often described as being the manner in which we reveal the truth that resides within our reach and sight but remains hidden, unseen. The mood and emotion contained in the everyday.
The hidden sacred in the ordinary.
My struggle with her words came in my own concern that the landscapes created in my work verged on the fantastic, something apart from human reality. Could these inner landscapes as I call them reveal authentic human truths?
This was a concern for me for a long time. Granted, it was an esoteric one, A matter of my own self-perception, not something that changed my work in any way.
And it was this fact that the work wasn’t affected by my concerns that finally convinced me of the ability of human truths to be exist in my imagined world. For though it was of the mind, it was built on the reality of my experience in this world– all that I felt, saw, heard, and did. It was– and is–a kind of an enhanced reality.
In my mind I always perceived the landscapes I created as being real and of this world. Here and now, in this moment. And I think most people see them in that same way, that despite fields that are sometimes in colors they might not normally see and a Red Tree that sometimes towers over the surrounding landscaped peppered with Red Roofed house with no doors or windows, it comes across as reality.
Perhaps it is the reality as seen in our dreams. Who hasn’t had dreams where upon waking we are convinced that that dreamed place was real? And don’t those truths that are revealed to us in these dreams seem absolutely possible and self-evident? And even though the truths seem to evaporate in mere moments, there existence lingers with us.
Maybe dreams and art serve much the same purpose; to make us aware of the truths before us that we fail to see.
Hey, works for me right now.
For this Sunday Morning Music, I am sharing a song that I was surprised I had never shared here before since I had used its title for a painting many years ago. The title is I Dream a Highway from the ethereal Gillian Welch. Then I remembered why I had not shared it before. It’s about 14 minutes long. Don’t let that scare you. Please give it a few minutes. The first comment under this video is How can a 14 minute song still not be long enough? I immediately nodded in agreement on reading that. For me, it has the sound and tone of dreams, and it soon becomes a soothing meditation. If I wore a Fit, I would bet my heartbeat drops quite a bit when I listen to this song.
Hey, it either this or two minutes of the Ramones cranking out Beat on the Brat. If you don’t like it, you know the routine by now–git.