Conversation About the "Something More" in Art

'Betsy's Pear', Pastel

 I enjoy, and learn a lot from talking with friends and fellow artists about art. Here's parts of a recent conversation trying to get at the 'something more' in a work of art. If you have thoughts, feelings, or experiences about this weighty subject, please post a comment. Thanks!

I know pieces which attract my eye, but I can’t verbalize what it is about the brush strokes, etc. that attract my eye.   It doesn’t fit with my stereotype of ‘just capturing the scene’ because there is more there. What is it that gives it that emotional feeling, and you know it when you see it, but what IS it.

That’s something I’ve wondered over quite a lot, because I’d like to be able to find out how to get there more often.  And yet I think it is one of those Zen things that cannot be consciously created.  In fact, the more I deliberately try, like walking into the studio and saying “I’m going to make a great painting today”, that’s going to mean for sure that the work won't have 'something more.'  As I’ve searched around trying to identify those things so I can nurture them, a key ingredient is that I feel really strongly connected with an image.

How does that connection begin/what does it mean?

It can be in different ways.  It might be ‘oh, I really like the movement in through there’ or it might be certain color harmonies going on.  Sometimes it is gestural. The connection is a node where they all come together- the physical, emotional, spiritual.  And to a lesser extent, the intellect, but I’d say this is more minor.  I need to use my left brain as a tool to put it together, but it is not really a bit part of what connects me to the place.  It starts with emotional and spiritual connection of something greater than myself, so I’m joining up with,, getting in touch with life force, which is a bridge into the spiritual for me. Something that ignites me. I guess a majority of the time it starts as a plein air painting ... a spot I connect with in that way, harmonize, get a starting off place.  Yet sometimes it happens as evoked images where I just am letting the image be totally open-ended, and following the Spirit and my emotions that weld together into something that eventually takes form (and usually becomes a landscape!).  What helps a painting be most expressive, is when I have that connection, whether it be from the land or from myself, and the spiritual force I feel.

What is it that I as a viewer would see in a painting that has that strong emotional ‘wow’ in it.  Physically, what is the difference in the painting itself that a viewer would see or feel differently?

The closest I can come to that is some of what David Friend’s principles- it does come to the viewer as a kind of gestalt, that only later can the viewer piece it together.  Something that really reaches deep and engages the viewer is what I’m trying to describe. Does it have a certain quality of feeling- that is highly, highly subjective.  But it is known.   I think the quality of feeling is probably a lot in how the marks are made, the colors, the scale, the overall size of the painting.  And it probably relates to the next principle- are the shapes harmoniously relate?.  It is about the big shapes fitting together in some way that feels ‘whole.’  

I’m not sure asking why will ever lead to a totally satisfying answer.  I think it is very, very subjective.  And then that’s for me the real appeal of it, too, because it is something that can express something that I don’t think words do, and how art adds something to our life that is really, really valuable, but is very different from the other sort of logical stuff which is valuable. Paintings feel to me like a reservoir of life force.  I love thinking of it that way.  It is something that will continue to emanate those feelings and experiences.  It puts them in a way that’s held.  Visual art is really unique in doing that.  Seeing paintings in museums I often feel a powerful tenderness, which brings tears to my eyes. I sense the power of the condensed and distilled emotions and insights.  I think that in any one moment of time of our lives we don’t quite have that degree of richness. And even in those peaks, it comes and goes.  But a painting can distill all of that and hold onto that, so it keeps emanating those emotions.  It doesn’t wear off.  It takes a lifetime as a creator to get to the place to be able to make those really, rich deep works that we’re trying to describe.

Why does it take a lifetime to do that?

I think it is an amalgam of different experiences.  Being intensely, intensely focused, but letting things like flow through me.  Marks done consciously and deliberately are much, much different, and don’t ring true with that power than the ones made unconsciously or by following the guide- letting the work speak to me.   The thing is really, really hard.  To mature as a person, to be able to … in spiritual formation, I’m still working on that, of how to be receptive and attuned, and yet not trying to force something but not trying to ignore it.  It takes a lifetime to do that, I think.  But at least the paintings which really speak to me have that 'something more'....I don’t even like the word ‘unconscious’ – I don’t think it is a psychology thing, as much as a rich, balanced, deep life.  Somebody who is not full of themselves, they’re very sincere.   Just like the work itself is way more important than the artist themselves.