Illustrations

Figure 9. Lamp art by Robert Matysiak, photo found on the internet.

Figure 10. Found art by Will Wagenaar, photo found on the internet.

Life Force Designs Art

Introduction

Beings are natural artists. I sometimes wonder if women have preserved some of their spiritual strength, relative to men, simply by maintaining the tradition of painting their faces and otherwise considering their personal presentation as a kind of art form. This gives any woman who follows this tradition a measure of artistic expression in her life.  (I am sure there are places on earth where the above discussion does not apply.)

And so, as a child I took my art for granted and did not bother to preserve it. But as I aged, the work took on more importance, approximately in proprtion to the amount of communication I received regarding the uselessness of art. As I began to think seriously about going to college, that message began to overwhelm me, and I felt that I could no longer justify my former fancy to become an artist. It took a lot of work and a lot of humiliation for me to realize that art is as important to the life of a being as water is to the life of a body. And by then it seemed too late to become a professional in the field. There seemed to be just too many lessons I needed to learn about courage, independance, and pure brass that I had missed by turning away from art to learn electronics. Yet I never gave up on the dream of somehow bringing the two divergent paths of my life back together and create some sort of new age super-highway. Well, that hasn't happened yet, but my dad likes the stuff I did in high school, and I have fond memories of those projects, and even some photos of some of them, and here are a few.

If we take art to include most or all products of the creative imagination, then we see, if we bother to look, the importance of art (or the creative imagination!) in the lives of men (women) and societies in general. It really serves so many useful and essential purposes that they would be difficult to fully enumerate. But you would have to include in the list the shaping of visions of possible futures for entire cultures. And so the artist, perhaps more aware than most of what he or she is actually doing in society, has every right to stand tall and proud as an essential force in human affairs since the earliest dawns of time.

Resources

General

These days I find art in strange places. I run across real art (photos of it) in the photo gallery section of TechRepulic, an IT news service that I signed up for. Photographic art is all over the internet. I have also run across many sites of artists in my internet travels. There are probably great sites for traditional art, art instruction, art appreciation, etc., but I have not been involved in those subjects much since my teenage days when I used to get catalogs from the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Series

The Art Series was Ron Hubbard's attempt to lay down some basic stable data for artists. It was written for church staff members who were working on church promotional projects, including music and films. It was published several years ago in a large but oddly unillustrated book called Art. I hope it will some day be re-published with illustrations. Nonetheless, it is a valuable resource.

Beauty in nature, and the wonderful world of photography.

I have not given much space on this site to my interest in nature and nature photography. Any site must have its limits. But I wanted to squeeze in a couple photos and mention a recent discovery of mine. Photographing snow at night can be quite rewarding, though difficult without a light source! And forest flowers are some of the most unusual and delicate I've seen.

Just this month (Feb 2011) I discovered the painter named Akiane. Her paintings, done in the old realistic style, with paint and brushes (not airbrush!) are compelling enough on their own. They include a wide range of subjects including spiritual. She considers that she has been inspired by God. She has no other explanation for why she paints. But even more compelling than her work is the fact that she started producing pro-quality paintings at the age of approximately 8 years old, and this year (2011) will be turning 16. She has already produced hundreds of paintings and sold them for thousands of dollars each.

How could someone that young be so gifted? The possible answers lie in the study of spiritual subjects, such as Scientology. From the point of view of the greater spiritual community, beings like Akiane are returning to earth because this is a time of transition when they are badly needed. If this theory is true, then when she, and others like her, grow older, they should begin to remember where they are recently from and why they chose to come here at this time. A few of the older ones have already spoken up about this (Michael Ellegion for example). If you are curious there is much more for you to learn about all this!

Life Force Designs Art