By Anthony Justina
Perhaps you believe an artist is only one of the masterful visual or auditory creators in the realm of painting, drawing, music-making and the like. Maybe you consider a “real” artist an individual who maintains financial stability from selling pieces or prints or, as is more common, perpetually struggles?
What if the term “artist” could stretch, could bend and expand to hold a wider diversity of individuals—as much as the word “human?”
An artist is a communicator, a present and aware chooser of the quality and quantity of one’s (his and her and their) own participation in relationship with energies, or resources. Ok – that was maybe a lot; let’s work backward.
Resources or energies make up the wide spectrum of colors, textures, patterns, sounds, and every element or principle in the practice of art. This extends to invisible, intangible feelings, thoughts, concepts and the like that are likewise translatable. Consider sight as its own language, and taste another – what would the color chartreuse taste like? What color expresses petrichor, that invigorating scent after a summer rain? What sound evokes the thrill of epiphany when an idea reaches a new profound clarity? What does a thought look like?
It depends. And contrast provides context in depicting the relationships that emerge between things. It begins with oneself. Artists are cartographers mapping their inner-child and parent voices, and every other relationship spiraling out from this: the lover, the friend, and the stranger.
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