Living well with art

This is a blog about why art matters in our daily lives. Like the phrase, Plays Well with Others, we can learn to Live Well with Art. Indeed art benefits our mental and physical wellness. But it does something more. Art asks us to slow down and look. With its harmonies and dissonance, it challenges us to think and feel complexly. Colors, shapes, textures engage many senses. When we gaze at or interact with art, we are embodied. This is vital in a time when disembodiment is the norm, where we spend more time on screens than in the physical world.

Art gives meaning to our lives. It tells stories, encourages reflection, calms nerves, stimulates thought. I’ll explore all this in my posts here, with reflections on my own life and through interviews with artists and art collectors. I hope to provide you with inspiration for surrounding yourself with art whenever and however you can.

As I write this post, I am facing a piece of art by my friend Scotty Craighead. (I purchase a lot of art from friends - more on that in future posts.)

This piece is big! Four foot by four foot. It hangs above our fireplace. Scotty created a collage of photographs and mixed media that plays with macro images of a thermal feature in Yellowstone National Park. Scotty takes aerial photos of natural features - in this case a milky, gem-like green edged with rusty-colored pine needles - then enlarges the photos and cuts them up. He rearranges these pieces from a micro landscape to create large-scale reimagined landscapes. The effect is mesmerizing. In this piece the rough octagonal “pools” of thermal waters look like amoeba swimming around in a lake of hairy pine needles. Get close and you can see the textures and gloss of the landscape.

I’ll never see Yellowstone the same way after meditating on Scotty’s artwork.

One of the many things I value about living with art is the way it can help me look at the natural world in new ways. By zeroing in on aspects of nature artists help us notice more. Some use synthesis to to do, like Scotty. He takes realistic components of nature and reduces them to elements, focusing our view in the way he wants. We are meant to see the small details. If we were looking at a picture of the entire thermal feature, we might miss the fascinating tiny parts.

Sometimes artists respond to the natural world with pure abstraction. Like my friend Alissa Davies. In the work featured as my main image for this post, Alissa riffs on nature. But the painting is just as much about an emotional state as a physical impression.

Alissa practices what she calls “intuitive painting,” where her emotions and impressions take shape organically on the canvas. I love her bold gestures overlaid with delicate patterning. This painting suggests a summer storm, or a moment of insight and illumination.

About her work, Alissa says, “I am inspired by natures colors, patterns and textures; emotional states; inner worlds and true selves; and children making art. I do not have a preconceived idea when I paint, rather I work intuitively, allowing the painting unfold as it needs to. I have inspirations and impulses that bring me to the canvas and my process taps into where I am in the moment. Taking risks, not holding on too preciously, playing, and being curious guide my art-making. My hope is that viewers feel alive when they look at my work, that they feel moved in an emotional way.”

These are just a few quick examples of art that inspires me. I like expanding the concept of landscape art to include abstraction. Have you encountered an artwork that gave you a new window on the natural world?

Why live with art?