Creative Spirituality
OBJECTIVES
- Become familiar with ways in which spirituality influences artists
- Discuss the differences between spirituality and religion
- Examine spirituality as a generative force and a well spring for creativity
ORIGINAL POST
Creative Spirtituality Discussion
After reading chapter three in “Art as Spiritual Practice” by Grey, I learn to see pieces of work in different views. Grey discussed the differences between look and see, which are two levels of seeing art. He pointed out we should use our heart instead of just eyes to see works deeply, which I think is really interesting because I feel like this is similar when we see a person. He said that “in the deepest art, a condition of the soul is revealed, one’s heart is opened, and spiritual insight is transmitted to the eye of contemplation” (p.82). Just like when we get along with some people, we firstly would just see them in general and have first impression of them, then we start to actually know them after talking or hanging out, and finally we can only know them very well by knowing their stories and seeing them by heart.
Grey talked through the article that artists use three eyes to see their works, and wholeness, harmony and radiance are three elements to be considered for beauty (Grey). When I see a piece of art, I suddenly will have my first sense of its subject or theme. By now, I just look at it. When I start thinking about the motivation or stories behind this work while I seeing it, I am using my second eye. When I connect it with myself or I can feel the spirit inside of it, that’s the time I really understand this work. In this perspective, I cannot say I totally understand any of the art because I never had such experience to see any of them deeply. Grey mentioned that his painting Transfiguration took him so long to finish it because he wants to express the spirit behind it, which is the hardest stage in creating art. I know I probably would not feel the spirit of it by seeing it now since I still don’t know the artist in person and his stories, but I am very thankful to him for letting me know I actually have more than two eyes to see the world.
REFLECTION
By studying this unit, I learned a lot about what artists’ life look like and how spirituality influence them. In Grey’s theory, artists’ creativity has six phases: formulation, saturation, incubation, inspiration, translation and integration. (Grey, 82). Grey’s point about three eyes is very interesting. “I have always been mystified by the body-mind-spirit relationship and the difficulty of making these multiple dimensions of reality visible in a work of art.” (Grey, 84). I think each of them is important and spirituality is shown mainly in many of them, and every artist has their own personal spirituality to help doing art.
http://opbmed.blogspot.com/2013/10/illness-and-spirituality.html
I chose this picture to demonstrate my understanding of spirituality because I think the very important element of spirituality is connection. Artists should feel connecting with their work and I also discussed this more deeply in my blog post Creative Spirituality Reflection. The creativity and attractive part are both important but if the artist didn’t put the spirit in his or her work, then the work would end up like a meaningless work.
In doing this assignment, I also feel that I can understand deeper about the differences between spirituality and religion. I never thought about this before, but I feel like these two things are separate but also connecting with each other. In other words, they have overlaps since they help artist to balance their work.
Bibliography:
FUTURE
I was impressed by Grey’s ideas and works after knowing how hard he tried to finish every piece of it. I think I should pay more attention to art, and next time when I see a piece of work, I will try to discover if spirituality influenced the artist when he was doing it.
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Table of Contents
· What is Art?
· Food As Art
· Adornment
· Horror
· Creative Spirituality
· Technology
· Remix
· Public Art
· Bibliography
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