Life As Art+Framed by the Experience

...Art is abstract, life is concrete, using life(material)we create abstract(art)representations and these are our thoughts. Our thoughts are art, abstract electrical signals firing in layers of patterns that get referenced and through their referencing are assigned meaning.

In art we create meaning through the layering of material.

In life we create meaning through the layering of material. In the sense that, every successive moment in our experience is layered in our brain creating a layering of material experiences that can be viewed as a work of art in progress. Or looked at as smaller scale works of art in each full day. Or the extreme smaller scale(scale being determined by Time) art in which the piece is viewed with each influx and mapping of sensoral abstract electrical input patterns.

The quotation at the top of the blog is the driving corroborative thought from another artist 50 years before. About 2 month ago I had a discussion in my back yard with a friend who had never had any art history or theory, and he was looking out the Void in our backyard fence and expressed the same thought or experience that Tony Smith was describing 50 years ago in New Jersey. Our back yard faces south, away from the city of Atlanta, towards the federal penitentiary that glows way off in the distant tree line. In between the prison and our house is a segment of the Atlanta Beltline, and in between that and the prison, in the valley, we frequently hear many gun shots at various times of the day.

This particular night though we were sitting out back and Charles looks out through the Void and exclaims to me, "You should paint this, right here, that's art..." As I look beyond my shoulder I see the Imposing glow of the penitentiary lights, keeping eye over the distant cloudy tree line, as a large commercial airliner is coming down for a landing in the even more distant background. All of this is then remarkably framed through the next varying layers of houses and the dismantled backyard fence in the foreground nearest us.

I knew exactly what he meant, and it made my month to hear him say this. So I ask him what he means and he begins to describe that that view some how aligned and formed a composition between everything in the scene. Just as the artist may frame and organize a painting by certain proportions or geometric shapes that work subconsciously to make the piece beautiful and meaningful.

Things align in life that make it beautiful. Whether we have a conscious enough eye and imagination or not though is up to the framer. One who has entered into the world of Life as Art will see things more beautifully, and see how much control they really have to frame their own experience.

As Tony said "Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it. You just have to experience it.”