Finding The Language Of Art

 I am beginning a new voyage into unknown territory – the worldly dimension of Art. When I was young I drew, painted, and loved making art but then I stopped, pursuing Words instead. Thinking and reason became my tools of worldly investigation, science the field of my attention. But last night I saw the language of Art and it is enticing me to enter a new doorway.

Over dinner with some A-list art scholars (an art museum director, a curator, and an art consultant), I really saw for the first time how art is a doorway of self-discovery and what lies in its wake.

I’m a late bloomer to the art world. In college when most students are exposed to this Truth in Humanities or Art History classes, I opted out for Feminist Studies instead (it was the early 70s). I missed the tour through the minds of artists across the ages, not learning words such as post-modernism, cubism, or names like DeKooning, Leger, etc.

Today, I still don’t have the labels or memory stores of Who’s Who in the Art world or its history, but I suddenly ‘get it’, the why and what is Art passion, Art addiction, and Art collecting alike.

Art is a means of self-discovery, a quiet, non-verbal expression of mind – one’s own attempt to share a glimpse of the vast and infinite Beauty (or Truth) through visual expression, beyond words.

All the facades of pretense I associated with Art Collectors, Art Scholars, and Art Intellectuals are stripped away when a piece of Art truly speaks.

It juts beyond all words.

Finding such a piece of art – one speaking of Truth clearly – must be like wading through a vast body of moving water to find a single lily pad delicately balanced in stillness. I don’t know exactly, right now it is just a feeling, I’ve never before taken this road. But for the first time last night I see an uncharted land lies ahead of me – a world of Art and Artists attempting to convey this Truth through a language I am just beginning to learn.

I feel as though I was handed a flashlight in a dark room and beckoned to begin to explore.