Solace

Whether you see the artist’s product as,”solace for the broken,” or as a series of conjuror’s tricks, you can’t deny the fact that i is mankind’s most enduring activity…after birth, death, eating and sleeping. People do art.

I have often gone to the beach and observed that very few people can be on the shore without throwing a stone into the water or pocketing a shell. It seems we love to alter whatever we find amongst the knickknacks of the world. I once watched a child at play move a blue block out of a one of blocks and replace it with the identical blue block from another stack. Here , the act of change was destined and, in a way, the art itself.

We like to leave our mark and we don’t care whether it is a flag on the moon or a handprint made in prehistoric times on a random cave wall. The need for change appears encoded and our flair for mimesis allows us to both mimic and alter the world. My MFA tells me that this type of creative play leads to self discovery. Today I am in Los Angeles to visit my youngest grandchild and his parents, my wife and I took him to the zoo. At the end of the outing we bought this child a stuffed giraffe and that allowed him to have his own animal…it evoked the experience he had feeding REAL giraffes. Another notion…art allows us to possess something no matter how ephemeral the work of art may be. We have the perfect smile from La Giaconda to brighten our days although the real smile left us in the 16th century. It grants us a victory over time.

Today we have art therapy. People work with clay, paint or create a visual journal (among other techniques) to achieve what is called, “creative healing”. deep seated conflicts can be reconciled by a specific creative regimen. ” Drawing your feelings” is what every writer, dancer, sculptor, painter is doing in their chosen medium.

So, art gives us presence, evokes unlimited emotion, enhances our play and makes us whole again. My grandson is now drawing concentric circles in various colors on an easel. They are beautiful circles and he draws them with passion and a hand that may never be as free again. Picasso said it best: “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” I hope this little artist’s studio never closes.