h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought a nice place to start with a series of ‘philosophical’ writings, is discussing the relationship between art, and philosophy!

Though many people today may not realize it, art was an integral part of philosophy from the days of the ancient Greeks. Philosophy is still inherent in art – all modern art ‘movements’ have some kind of underlying philosophy. Individual artist who break with ‘movements’ also do so under the impetus of their own philosophic understandings. High art or low art – philosophy is always a part of it!

The philosophy of art, as traditionally conceived, is called ‘aesthetics’. The key question of aesthetics is this: what is beauty? This question has been answered in an amazing variety of ways over the ages. In ‘modern’ art this question has become somewhat obscured, since many modern artists do not even aim at producing works that are considered ‘beautiful’. But beauty, and the appreciation of beauty, remains important to people.

And for me, as an artist, the matter of beauty is at the core of my work. I *do* aim to produce works of beauty, a beauty that can be understood and appreciated by others. I am not concerned with shocking, confusing or bewildering the viewer. I would rather produce something the viewer will be instantly sympathetic towards.

Now this too of course has a philosophical component. Folks who know me, know my art mainly focuses on nature and wildlife. But folks may not be aware just how much is involved in doing what I do. First of all, I select from hundreds or even thousands of photos when choosing a subject. Many of my paintings use more than one photo as reference. In choosing photos, I go over dozens of photos per ‘subject’ before I find something that I find fully aesthetically satisfying. I want a composition that works. For every photo that actually ‘works’ as a painting, in terms of overall composition – there are hundreds that don’t. They may be good photos but they would fail as paintings.

Now one may ask, what makes a ‘composition’ work? The qualities are subjective. I can’t always put my finger on it, but I am looking for overall harmony: the different shapes, formed both by the main subject as well as its background, the colours, the textures, the interplay of light and dark, how they all contribute towards an ‘effect’.

A key element in my painting is ‘organicness’. A kind of ‘look’ … organized chaos may be a way to put it. Few straight lines, or areas of ‘flat’ colour, or neat arrangements … rather, a kind of ‘wildness’, variety, complexity. I like detail, and with ‘organic’ detail, the effect is one of richness … you are looking at natural things and you are perceiving the textures of things like fur, grass, bark, leaves of trees … things that are familiar to most people; looking at them in a painting, connects with people’s own experiences of these elements of nature … but in my paintings I try and expand on that; after all, in nature, these things never look the same way twice. There’s infinite variation, and I try to make the viewer aware of that. I paint animals, and plants, and scenes, sometimes of things familiar to people … after all, people know lions and elephants … but in each painting I try and present my subject in a *specific* way, and try to direct attention to one specific aspect. A thing like an elephant or a lion can be painted in so many different ways. Different poses … in different situations … different conditions of ‘lighting’ … and as an artist I can use the ‘pure’ elements of art, of visual perception – colour, light and dark, shape, line, texture – in a different way in each painting. As such, Nature is an inexhaustible source of material and inspiration.

I also try and teach with my art. Apart from popular subjects like lions or elephants I also paint rare things, endangered species. Many people have no idea these things even exist, so as an artist by portraying it, I am fixing awareness of it in the mind of the viewer, awareness that it actually exists, and awareness of what it looks like. Also, awareness of its beauty. I don’t know of a single living species that doesn’t have a kind of beauty to it; as an artist AND philosopher, my aim is to encapsulate that beauty, show it to the viewer. Thus I can – I hope – make a contribution towards the awareness of the need to safeguard the non-human species of planet Earth. This links up with my own philosophy of Life on Earth: that other species are also important, and that it is *wrong* of us to exterminate them … that it is *wrong* of us to destroy the natural beauty of so much of our own planet.

But … *why* do we experience beauty in Nature? First of all, do *all* people find beauty in Nature? I’m not sure about that. There may be people who cannot see beauty in Nature. People who can’t see beauty in Nature probably can’t see beauty in anything else either. I would consider such a person to be ‘aesthetically handicapped’ … and I don’t mean that in a deprecating way; a person who’s aesthetically handicapped, is no worse a person than for instance one that cannot walk, or one that cannot see.

But still, most of us do have an aesthetic sense. And those with an aesthetic sense, can find beauty in Nature, and/or in art. Still, what is that *for*?

Now this comes to the ‘holistic’ part of my personal philosophy. To me, aesthetic appreciation is part of appreciation in general: appreciating what is good, what is interesting, what is beautiful. We recognize things we value in a beautiful work of art: skill, balance, harmony, order (or chaos – ‘creative disorder’!), complexity and intricacy (but also elegance and simplicity!), and other such elements. Many of these elements have value for us outside of art as well.

We are sympathetic towards beauty, we ‘connect’ with what we find beautiful. This sense of connection is part of what integrates our own selves with the great ‘outside’ world. In helping us do this, art fulfills a role that can be called spiritual. My aim is to find elements of beauty that can be appreciated by as many people as possible. This is a matter of unification ... finding things that we can agree on, things we can all appreciate, and appreciate together. Something that can really bond people with each other - and also with our whole Universe.

But all the same, art – while capable of doing all the above – is always something *more* than this, as well. Beyond its functions, beauty is beautiful and valuable in and of itself. This is expressed in the saying ‘art for the sake of art’.

So, in my art – while aiming to portray the beauty of Nature – I am constantly exploring the question of beauty itself. In our art class we are working with a variety of techniques that can be used by artists to make their works more ‘artistic’. Without giving away our ‘trade secrets’, I can say that these techniques generally involve balance, harmony, integrity, and the exploitation of the full range of visual elements that can be present in a work. The possibilities are endless. In my own case there’s even a ‘science’ to it as well. An artist can be immensely well served by knowledge of the science of perception in humans, and the science of light and colour. Beyond that, there’s the field of human psychology … people’s *emotional* reactions to what they see.

With regard to all these things, I am still scratching the surface! In fact, this journal entry itself is merely scratching the surface when it comes to the philosophy of art; I hope to say a lot more in future postings.