Learning to See

The hardest part of being an artist is learning to see. This is true no matter what kind of art you happen to be making. Writers talk about "finding their voice", and often artists have to do that as well, but there's more to it than that. It's more than simply finding what you want to say, and how (though I am just enough of a writer to know that that in itself is no small task); it's trying to figure out how a certain idea looks, and figuring out how to share that vision with others. We don't get to share ideas, only the suggestion of our ideas. Like it or not, we're alone in our own heads.

But if we are very talented-- or, far more likely, very lucky-- we can suggest our ideas in a manner that not only conveys what we had hoped for personally, but also offers room for the audience to build upon it with their own thoughts and imaginations. At that point, we have created something that is more than the sum of its parts, that transcends our original intentions for it, and how exactly that happens no one can say, because that is part of the mystery that makes art meaningful and important and great. In our modern age of (theoretically, at least) thought and science and reason, art is the last refuge of magic. (More on this at a later date.)

Learning to see, which is the great struggle of any young artist, refers to a visual understanding of things. There is more to what we see than photons and wavelengths and neural pathways. There's more there than what the eye can pick up. We see an apple on the table. We see that the apple is red, that the table is brown, that the light is warm and yellow. But unless we have some understanding of how light works, of shape and depth and form, we cannot paint or draw the apple and the table correctly. We have to know that the warm yellow light will cast a cool blue shadow. We have to know that the table will reflect light back onto the apple, and that the redness of the apple will affect how we perceive the browness of the table. We have to appreciate the interaction that objects have with one another, and how that affects our perceptions.

So to an extent, learning to see is matter of knowledge. Something that can be pointed out and taught. On a deeper level, though, it refers to an instinct for visual art that cannot be aquired, only awakened. (Which is why some people, though highly proficient technically, struggle to create something that is engaging and moving visually. I often feel like I'm one of those people.) Yes, you see the apple on the table, but can you paint it? Can you capture it in such a way that it becomes more than an apple on a table? This is the spiritual side of art, the visceral, emotional aspect of learning to see. Countless thousands of artists have painted tables and fruit, but there is only one Cezanne. Many people (including, if I may say so, myself), have drawn the face and figure, and drawn it well, but there is only one Michelangelo, only one Lucien Freud. Apart from technical skill and understanding, there is something else, that cannot be taught or written in a book, that must be present to make great art.

As a kid, we all hope that there is some purpose to our lives, that we are meant for something beyond the experiences of ordinary men. (At least, I hope we all felt like that as children. God, what kind of life would that be if you didn't?) I wanted to be a great artist (among other things), even if I didn't know what that meant. Now I'm older, and a little wiser-- just a little-- and I know that while I will certainly be an artist, I probably will not be a great one. The hope is still there, of course, but I am no Picasso or DeKooning. But every once and a while, every once in a while, I will be at work on a piece, and my mind will empty itself of thought and worry; I stop thinking about the how and why and I find myself working almost unwittingly, as if in a trance. On those occasions, when I am lucky enough to have them, I feel as if I've tapped, however briefly, into whatever it is that great artists have, that shines through in their work. And maybe it will come to nothing in the end, but that hope, that sense of shared experience with giants, is enough to keep me going.