What art is to me

Art to me, and a surprising amount of people, is a way of life. There’s no other way. You eat, you breathe, you look for beauty around you. You may or may not be able to replicate what you see, but you yearn to make it pretty. I believe that I was meant to do just this, and that my brain is wired in a way that I can do nothing else as well as I can think art.

When I feel that art, my mind functions in a very positive state. Are things around me always perfect? Oh my God, no! But I will compose my berries in my bowl of oatmeal. I love asymmetrical with lots of negative space. I will rearrange my furniture to see if I can make it functional while being honest to my sense of design. I’d love to design my own clothes. LOVE shoes with different designs on each foot. Shaved a third of my head.

But the commonality in these moments of my life is that I seek something more. To break the mould, or to fit into my own. 

Art makes one appreciate the smallest detail. You know someone is as crazy when you see them staring at something completely random and marveling over it. Try Lieing down on the floor of a cathedral to admire the ceiling. A dry leaf on the street can fill a hundred canvases. A single word will spark a thousand more. A ray of sunlight becomes a story in photos. Inspiration feels like that breath that you’ve been waiting so long to take. That sense of familiarity in a strange place. A reason to take the next step, to wake up every morning. 

Seeing beauty in mundane things, appreciating the beauty that people around me bring to my life and making something beautiful in the process is the purpose I seek. I feel whole when I make something. I feel challenged when that something doesn’t match the vision in my head. I feel energized with the agony of that confusion and restlessness. And sheer joy in the journey to perfection. 

Perfection. It’s a beautiful state of mind. No two are alike. You aren’t the same person from a moment to the next, how does one achieve perfection? None of my work is perfect. I undo and redo a lot of things over and over, and nothing is ever finished. Then where does one stop? 

I stop when my mind has run out of reasons to change it again. 

When beauty is the third or fourth word that comes to mind after all the mistakes I see. There’s beauty in that too. To know that you’ve pushed through and you have traveled far from where you believed you could to where you are. 

Beauty is the result of art. And art is the manifestation of beauty. Dance, music, painting, cooking. Math-some equations are just beautiful. 

There’s art in everything when you see it.