Rachel Rubin Wolf - Splash 12: Celebrating Artistic Vision

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this edition of Splash we are celebrating artistic visionthat undefinable gift of the artistthe ability to make visual that which exists in the minds eye, or perhaps only in the heart. Some inspiration comes from the beauty around us, yet each artist still exercises the beauty receptors he or she carries withineach different, each unique.

Sandra Blair submitted a quote from Vincent van Gogh: It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Then again, Nancy Fortunato finds that she was inspired directly from the language of paintersin fact that of van Gogh himself! Several others found vision in old family photographs, melding interesting images with deep connections and emotions. Still-life artists find inspirational vision in placing meaningful, or perhaps even humorous, objects together, thereby creating a small personal cosmos and bringing it to life.

Many artists exercise their vision in observing people and expressing the emotion of a fleeting moment in a facial expression or a bodily gesture. Others find their inspiration in the timeless moments of nature and in things that will far outlast our lifetimes. But in all of these cases each artist carries within them the beauty that is just waiting to be energized by an inspirational moment or idea.

And, oh yes, we are reminded by Bev Jozwiak that there is also some hard work involved. Having ones beauty receptors in place is the first step but, as Bev says, To be able to fulfill your artistic vision, you must first put in the hard work of learning to paint. Tenacity wins out over talent every time.

This is why we are celebrating the vision of the artists in this book. They not only admired the beauty they saw or imagined, they put in the time to learn how to translate it into paint and paper so that we can share their vision. For that we are all richer.