The Psychology of Art
Sometimes I sit down by myself and imagine how the world would be like, look like, feel like, if art had not existed. It often starts with my imagination refusing to let me visualize a place so wicked, tasteless and insipid, but when I try a little harder and succeed to envision life through dreary, somber glasses — a world with no books or guitar picks or paintbrushes or laughter — I almost always end up thanking God wholeheartedly for choosing to bless our planet with that little glimmer of positivity.
As a child, it had been truly beyond me how and why the majority of people refuse to take art seriously and give it the respect it deserves. That’s because one day I chose to open up my mind a little more to show people how useful it is to live in art and blend themselves in with creativity. I chose to look further ahead of what people would otherwise call fruitless, incompetent, inadequate or ineffectual. I refused to be degraded, undervalued or underappreciated because the truth is I do serve a purpose to my community — through art, I inspire, aspire, I spread happiness, and I paint smiles.
Most of all, I learn how to express my emotions through a number of different ways.
Perhaps if you were knowledgeable or passionate enough about the art of painting, your talents will tell you the shapes and colors in which you can pour your heart out onto a once blank, lifeless canvas. Sometimes your soul and sharp vision sort of elbow you in the ribs, hinting to you that maybe the internal hollowness you feel must make way for a dejected black-and-white painting of an abandoned building with dilapidated rooftops and cracked walls, or maybe since your heart is fizzing with vibrancy and joy, a sun setting looks better variegated and iridescent, casting its light gracefully against dozens of marigolds standing merrily on the bottom left corner. Abstract paintings, for instance, also have latent, but not concrete, meanings. You just need to feel how a certain color that mingles or blends with another in a certain way may represent anger, misery, content, or despair.
Dancing is another form of art, where your body replicates your soul. When you dance, your body must have great coordination with your mind, and a lot of times your heart. You move almost like a robot, but with your own instincts. It’s how you perceive emotions based on your previous life experiences by dancing and watching others dance, and being the observer you can, in fact, pick up emotion without having to see the facial expression of the dancer. If you want to dance, your heart tells you what you need to do. Then, it’s the role of your brain to convince you that you can actually do it until your body finally does it. Dancing is overall a physical, visual representation of sequences of movement, and is definitely a relieving expression of emotion.
Emotions can also be expressed with the writing of words. Writing is magical. You can try endless ways to express your thoughts through writing: perhaps use an amusing and thoughtful personification of nature, or play with words, twist them over and over until it feels as though you’ve ripped your heart out of your chest and laid it down on a paper in the form of 26 letters or less. You can write about a snowy winter night, or the way the yellow color of the sun slowly morphs with that of the blue sky during sunrise at 5:30 in the morning. You can write about autumn leaves or the smell of asphalt and concrete after a rainy day. You can write about the oblivious, horrifying way that a blind and deaf teenage girl perceives the world. And unless you try doing it, it might not occur to you that word after word after word is pure art in every respect.
They say that eyes are the window to the soul. They also say that if you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph. We all probably wish it were possible to take pictures with our eyes. However, there are substitutions. When this was enabled through a camera lens, a new and elegant form of art was born into the industry. Whether that be a large canvas of your loved one’s contagious smile on the wall or a remarkable album to keep with your personal hoardings, capturing special moments and freezing them in place is a beautiful miracle. And going great lengths to perfect the picture, trying to find the right angle, lighting and effect is utter passion all by itself.
Music, too, is an audio representation of your feelings, almost like the sound of your soul-mate from another universe voicing your thoughts in all possible major and minor notes, tunes and melodies. During hardships or good times, musical instruments can often be your good friend, your escape, your constant abode. Sometimes all it takes is the beat of your heart to mimic the sound of drums, or the relaxing tunes of a guitar to set your mood back on track. Not anyone can distinguish between happy and sad music; happy music does not necessarily have to be bubbly and jumpy like Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” for instance. In fact, a lot of times joyful music can be fully composed, serene and tranquil, representing content or heartfelt gratitude.
There are a lot of other types of art as well which cannot be counted on your fingers, because art is just so versatile, and there is so much more of it than what lies beneath the letters. Art is pretty much everything, in every sense of the word. Art is digging profoundly into the endless depths of the universe to discover the glamorous, spellbinding magic it has in store for us. There is just too much beauty in the world that is overshadowed by other ugly, cruel things and I personally think that is why a lot of us are sad on the inside.
And even though artists are often said to be prone to insanity, others continuously fail to decipher the truth behind those flickers of happiness that they all happen to have in their hearts.
I think art plays a significant role in our lives and needs to be as valued and respected as every other profession that someone may want to pursue in adulthood.
Because art is, in other words, making use of fountain pens and blank papers and eyes and ears and hands which would otherwise be lackluster if not soulless. You certainly need to go through a lot of mental and physical exercise to master it, but you do it by following your very own instincts. It glides very smoothly through life, almost as though you’re trying but not trying, just the way birds instinctively learn how to spread their wings and fly until they’re only a speck in the never-ending heights of blue.
