The article ‘Deeply Seeing’ examines the processes that occur when creating something meaningful. While discovering something beautiful or special, one must go through a series of steps in order to understand and appreciate its full potential. From the way that I interpreted these steps I see them as being superficial levels of analysis that occurs initially. Soon after one must fully delve into the subject and dig deeper in order to understand its significance and all of its facets that make it beautiful or special. “The artist’s spiritual eye recognizes the subject as a special aspect of the absolute”(Grey, 73). The holy presence of the subject’s unique beauty is its claritas, or radiance”(Grey, 73). One is not able to create something magnificent if you do not experience these levels of analysis. These levels of analysis are also said to be important for the viewer. He or she must go through a spiritual journey as well in order to understand the subjects depth and greatness. “Art is the transmission of states of being”(Grey, 79). This is an excerpt I found very interesting and after reading his creative process while creating his piece ‘Transfiguration’ , I understood what this meant. Your inner-self and outer-self both greatly have to do with what you create. Your state of mind as well as those around you have everything to do with what you create, your conscious as well as subconscious also have everything to do with what you create and in general your insight on the world is a platform for your art. I believe this was the authors main goal; to show this web of complexity that goes into a work of art. Something that represents you as a person and what you feel. Furthermore, Grey explains that art needs to be seen past its traditional value. Pushing the envelope of legitimacy is important, and is something that is necessary in our culture. This failure of accepting ‘illegitimacy’ may possibly relate to the failure of success among artists. However, success is a broad term and many people have varying definitions of what success is. This topic leads Grey into speaking of artistic influence and the importance of considering other art to better your own creativity. Overall art is a spiritual, creative process that pulls in every part of life in order to create something tangible, beautiful, creative and unique. This can not be limited to the superficial but instead you must draw influence from a higher self, and something beyond what you see as legitimate in this world. Grey emphasizes in his book that there is a substantial difference between looking and seeing when creating a work of art.
I enjoyed how you touched base on both the creative process that Grey introduced and somewhat of Saint Bonaventure’s three eyes of knowing. As far as the steps of the creative process that Grey talked about, do you feel that one must follow this order to correctly go through the creative process? I believe that art is sometimes spontaneous and that the creative process has no required order that has to be followed. Also, I like how you explained that both the artists and viewer may use these tools. Artists use these tools in order to create their artworks whereas viewers use these tools in order to understand the underlying meaning of an artwork. These tools allow an individual to look deeper and use their spirituality to make a connection, art is more than the superficial aesthetics that it holds. Sometimes art isn’t aesthetically pleasing to the eye but the underlying meaning is unique and beautiful. One must look past the aesthetics, by using these tools, to see the real beauty. Is there a time that you may have used either tool, the creative process or Saint Bonaventure’s three eyes of knowing, to breakdown the meaning of something?
I like what you have to say about transfiguration and how you align your selves. “An artist’s finest works can symbolically unveil depth upon depth of meaning, like mirrors reflecting each other, deepening endlessly” (75). This led me to believe that the alignment comes out with time and the meaning can change. I don’t think the alignment has to be known right away, but the artistic experience will have alignment even if it isn’t known.