Creatively Thinking

A friend of mine, Kay Lorbecki, who frequently sends me comments on my blogs, sent me something that I would like to share.   She recognizes that my constant question in   my blogs is “what is art?”   And those of you in the arts recognize that that question has been asked time and time again, and to date, and to arts credit and to the credit of those involved in the arts, it has not been pinned down to a solid, unmovable concrete answer.   The concept of art, does change with the times.   My need to maintain the “life” in art is what my blog is all about.   The life in my own work and the life in the work that others who call themselves artists do.   Kay is an artist.   She said she understands art as follows:   Joseph Conrad interesting as it pertains to “what is art.”   Written in 1957, the title of the work is offensive, but the thoughts contained within are worth a look. I am captivated by this line, “ To arrest, for the...

Morning coffee with angels. Land of Angels That dimension     Invisible dimension     Sensed not     Seen    Felt    Not touched Angels surround     Me     Touch     Me     Fill     Me In this land     Where     spirits     Live     Peace Heaven on earth     And     another     dimension Perhaps our human lives and the changes that happen to us are like the life of a dragonfly were we transform into another different dimension.   One life ends another beings. Featured image:  "Shamans" 15"x10.5"  Acrylic on Paper. Part of The Fishing Cabin Series

Gremlin green moss Darkly green pines Wind tickling glassy lake Sun reflecting back at me Soaring like a bird Featured image:  "Out To Pasture."  8"x8" Acrylic on Paper. At the Cabin Series 2018

I felt the now familiar tug, then the pull, then the really powerful pull.  I knew there was a very large fish on the other line.  It gave me; I never know how to tell a female fish from a male fish so the fish will remain an it, a great struggle diving deep pulling the line far out.  As it tired, I was able to pull it closer and closer to the boat I saw it was a huge northern pike.  Some people fish the lakes up here for pike, I am not one of them.  They smell and they are slimy.  What in the world is that slimy stuff all over them?  I have no trouble with touching a walleye, removing the hook that captured it, but the pike, nope, no way I will do everything in my power to avoid touching them.  I even bought myself a pair of plastic pink pliers, they even had a heart in the middle of them where they came together.  Don’t laugh , it was a good choice they had flat, not pointy, heads at the end, whi...

"Is reality real?" Remember the age old philosophical question?  If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall does it make a sound?  One can extend the question to does the tree exist, does sound exist if no one hears it no one sees it. Well if no one is around to hear it then no one hears it. But that does not mean it doesn’t make a sound.  It is an objective fact that the tree makes a sound.  Just as it is a fact that just because no one sees it it still exists.  It is real.  A tree is a tree, a sound is a sound. I believe that reality does exist within our perceptions.  We can’t make sound anything other than sound, we can’t make an object anything other than an object.  A tree is a tree.  A sound is a sound.  But we can create other things that we can identify as a tree, a sound.  We can make purple trees for example.  And sounds that sound like a falling tree but it isn’t the sound of a real ...

"Galaxy"  by Christine Alfery  22x30 Watercolor  How Do We Know It Is Art? To know something is to have knowledge of something. So how do we know something?  Do we used words, numbers to know something?  Words and numbers can be manipulated to suit desires and needs.  So we may know something that is based on desires and needs but that isn’t a kind of knowledge that can be valued and judged by all as a truth.  How we know something, our knowledge of something needs to be based on facts. Words numbers need not be related to something, they can be arbitrary and based on social conventions.  Facts need to be related to something, visible to all, they cannot be arbitrary.  Words often are based on social conventions.  If knowledge, how we know something, is based on social conventions such as words and numbers then knowledge is arbitrary. Knowledge with this kind of foundation, words and numbers based on social c...

Art needs to be valued.                 What should art be within our culture?  There is no question that there will be many diverse answers to that question.  Some see art as a social tool to manipulate a political agenda, others see it as something mystical that appears out of nowhere and is beautiful, others see art as historical showing the reality of a time.  However you understand or see art, art needs to be questioned as to how it is understood and used.                 Art today illustrates the enormous gulf between what we know, that is what is objective, physical, real and knowable and the mystical, the unknowable, superstition and imaginings.                 Art can be understood, judged, questioned through the knowable.  Art cannot be judged on the unknow...