“Artistic expression is the slowest form of suicide. The painter facing a blank canvas, the poet facing a blank page or the sculptor facing a mass of formless clay must understand that they are facing their executioner. And so understanding, are yet so compelled to deal another in a lifetime of self-deadly blows by their own brush, pen or hand.”
“Art is therefore a transaction. If you get something out of art as the observer or appreciator or audience… it’s because something was put in. A transaction has taken place. Something went from the artist into the art and from the art into you. The equation must balance. What the currency in this transaction is exactly could be a matter of debate. You as an observer are enriched… but the artist is diminished. Some part of himself or herself, some piece of who he or she is, has been emptied or poured out or transfered into the art. Permanently. Surrendering it into it’s own reality. Sacrificing it to the global human experience. The umbilical cord cut.”
“As an artist then… what are you transferring? What part of you are you pouring out into your art that it may pass to others? What is this currency and how crucial is it’s flow? And do you begin to glimpse the potential that lies in the church recapturing the essence of it’s life and worship through artistic expression? Do you begin to glimpse the potential of the artist-follower to embrace the call to this slow suicide that they may sow their self into human history… a visual voice and audible picture… of a love, a life, a hope and a wholeness emanating from He who is completely Other… and thus come to their end empty of self, divested of all internal endowment and personal essence, utterly spent.”
What do you think?
nooc
