What Is Art?

The following are my thoughts as an artist, son to another artist, my mother. She has a successful career as a painter and a sculptor.

How can one define art, quantify art? What is love? What is spiritual?

Could it be an abstract world where we explore our feelings or learn about life?

I think, personally, Art, as in creation, is an essence of God, or one of God's essences. That is why when we create something, we're plugging into the absolute power of God. It allows us to see beyond our eyes, to feel beyond our senses, to go where we cannot go, to create, to inspire, to tell a story. So we can portrait what we can't reach, sculpt and transform wood or rock into something new that can reach into our souls and touch our feelings. One cannot properly define art for it wouldn't do it justice. That's because art is infinite, it has no boundaries.

Having said that, I believe that art is valuable, and the study of art is important. Aristotle said it best when he stated this. He also perceived that "art imitates reality in order to teach us something about our world."

I couldn't agree more with Aristotle and Tolstoy that art is about communication. They believed that "art is essential for life and that the creation of and appreciation of art is instinctual, is "indispensable for life" and "is what makes us human." I believe that art has a lot to do with the spiritual experiences. It brings us closer to God. Tolstoy says that "art is one of the conditions of human life" and believed that "art is all about the expression of feelings." Feelings are of abstract nature, and feelings attest to our divine nature.  When we're in the creation process, we have an open channel with the divine, and with the essence of men. Men are of divine nature.

Professor Henry Tate honors us with his love art, having left us with a wealth of knowledge and understanding about art. He was an artist as a painter, but also an artist as a human being, in his passion, helped students to understand their own musical art. I saw art in the way in which he'd teach his students, leading them to their own paths of artistic development and discovery. Tate saw poetry and beauty in the definition that "art is a blank sheet of paper." 

Nona Hendrix states that "music is a variety of ways of expressing myself".

I say a true object of art carries the soul of its creator as if one could see from the creator's own eyes.

I share as examples some of my mother's paintings. I find it fascinating the way she goes from one style to another, yet her feelings come alive and with different intensities. She masterfully blends abstract and spiritual ideas or even feelings, making her painting or sculpture to come alive. I feel I can understand her further through her art.

I picked an instrumental composition of mine that I think helps to demonstrate using art to transmit feelings. I invite all of you to try and guess what I was feeling while playing it, maybe you can comment on how a certain passage shows or evokes stronger feelings as you listen.

©All Rights Reserved - Mauricio Bernini