Interpreting Art

I recently had a friend remark to me that good art doesn't require an explanation. In many cases I'm sure that's true. However, some people like to know the back story of an art piece, myself being one of those. What draws a person to a particular work of art? Or repels them for that matter? It's all about perception and interpretation.

The truth is that we interpret everything through our own experiences and beliefs, applying our understanding and perceptions of life to the situations we encounter. What one person perceives as positive, another will perceive as negative.

At my recent exhibit I was amazed at the interpretations that people had for certain pictures. Sometimes, their interpretation synced with mine, but mostly it didn't. I was fascinated by what others were seeing. A couple of friends of mine hadn't seen the piece, "The Soul Becomes Dyed." The tortured look of the guy on the left was too "real" for them and they were unable to look at the picture for long. Both of them are veterans of the war in Iraq, one of them seriously wounded in a landmine explosion. Their perception of the tortured face in the painting affected them in ways far outside my realm of experience. They were unable to hear the "message" of the quote because of their perception of that face. It saddened my heart as I gained greater insight into some of the trauma they had experienced at a very young age.

The Soul Becomes Dyed, Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 25.75"

Several people had reacted with tears to another piece on vulnerability, that touched them on some very deep level. Yet another young woman was wanting to know the Biblical basis for a collage on the cycle of life, talking to me for a good twenty minutes, trying to ascertain the "message," the exact Biblical quotes I had been thinking of, and fit it into her religious belief system. She was assigning a depth into the picture that was not consciously in my mind when I made that piece. I often look at a completed piece and see all kinds of things in the picture that I had not intentionally considered. While I often have a quote in mind when working, or am trying to make sense of something in my own life, my intuitive side frequently comes shining through in my artwork with amazing regularity and depth.

Art is therapy for me. It's how I process life's mental and emotional ups and downs. In the case of the tortured guy I was having a rough day, so I grabbed a piece of charcoal and started putting all that emotional energy onto the paper as a way of releasing it. I didn't want to leave myself empty at that point, so I found a picture of a guy laughing and drew him as well. This happened back in the early 90s and I've hung on to these two drawings for years. They finally ended up in this collage with the quote by Marcus Aurelius, "The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." That quote is the essence of the lesson I had been learning.

I had come to understand that emotions are the color in life, not the purpose. I had been struggling for years to get my emotions under some kind of control that didn't embarrass me on a regular basis. In that struggle I went through a period where it seemed I felt little emotion at all. The world was black and white and I wasn't liking that at all when it came to living a daily life. As I pursued greater understanding I discovered what I believe to be the purpose of emotions, which is, to bring color to life, and it is attached to our thought life. Emotion gives meaning to life, enabling us to "feel", to participate in life in a much greater depth than would be possible without it.

However, it is so easy to let emotions run amok and cause all kinds of damage in one's life. We rarely seem to understand the connection between our thoughts and our emotions. Most think that emotions come before thoughts when in fact it is the other way around. Like a light almost instantaneously following the flipping of the switch, emotions follow the course of our thoughts. It is no easy matter to separate the two. It requires a lot of work and energy to "split that atom," not to mention great courage to dig that deep into our own psyche. The pain of that process can be, and often is, very intense. We hate being uncomfortable in that way.

The Soul Becomes Dyed was for me a beginning realization of all this stuff, just as "heavy" to me as the pain of the realness of the tortured face was to my friends, just in a different way. But where their interpretation took on a negative effect, my overall perception of this artwork is actually positive. It reminds me to monitor my thoughts and emotions, remembering the connection between positive thoughts and positive emotions, and vice versa. It reminds me that I can control my thought life when I choose to do so. It also reminds me that my happiness comes from within, not without. It is a state of mind engendered by my thoughts and colored by my emotions. It's all about individual perceptions determining the interpretation.

Please feel free to share your perceptions and interpretation in the comments below.

Coming Out of the Closet of Fear

Coming Out, Mixed Media, 10.875" x 13.75"

I ran across a video on YouTube the other day of Ash Beckham speaking at a TED talk in Boulder, CO, that inspired the artwork for this week's blog.

Ash said this:

I'm going to talk to you tonight about coming out of the closet. And not in the traditional sense, not the gay closet. I think we all have closets. Your closet may be telling someone you love her for the first time. Or telling someone that your pregnant. Or telling someone you have cancer. Or any other of the hard conversations we have throughout our lives. All a closet is is a hard conversation. Although our topics may vary tremendously, the experience of being in and coming out of the closet is universal. It is scary and we hate it and it needs to be done. 

 

 My interpretation of that talk is that all closets of the mind are closets of fear. In my mind's eye I saw a closet with a partially open door and someone peeking out of the darkness, building up the courage to step out--a profound and difficult place to be in any hard situation.

I believe we all need to give ourselves a well-deserved pat on the back for every time we open the closet door in our mind, stepping out in an act of vulnerability and brave courageousness. We are brave. We are courageous. And we need to recognize that about ourselves.

Fable of the Blue Horse

Imagination, Mixed Media Collage on canvas board, 22" x 28", by Susan K. Leslie

The Fable:

The fourteen year old child stood looking at the painting she had just completed. Painted on black velvet was a magnificent horse standing on a rocky point silently surveying his world, a guardian at large. Everything looked blue in the light of a large moon hanging brightly in the sky above. How she longed to be there with him, imagining the feel of the cool night air, the softness of his coat, the acceptance and safety of a loving friendship between horse and human. The longing was almost unbearable in its sweetness.

I must take this to father, she thought. He loves horses, too. She grabbed up the painting and ran to find her father. She found him sitting in his favorite chair and she proudly displayed her painting to him. Will he like it she asked herself. Oh, I hope he likes it! He must for it is beautiful, achingly so.

"What do you think, Dad?" She eagerly looked at her father's face, waiting in rapt anticipation of his approval. He looked at the painting and slowly turned his eyes to her hopeful face.

Gently, he said, "There's no such thing as a blue horse," crushing her hopes and dreams in one fell swoop from which it took that child forty years to recover.

The moral of this story: The words we speak matter way into the future. Be careful with your words.

Go Ahead! Make My Day!

11x14, Mixed media collage

Some days just feel like that. I needed the humor the day I made this picture. I had been watching a video by Shannon Green and decided to experiment. I've found so many fun and wonderful techniques on YouTube and have ended up with many of my pieces through experimenting with different techniques.

I cruised through the internet and my magazine stash looking for people parts. I loved the face and headdress of the woman and those awesome muscular arms. Her body is cut out of an old book page, the top of the dress is a result of another experiment in making backgrounds, and the bottom is scraps from another project. At the time I had just bought an older model Cricut machine on Craig's List and so the type was the result of playing with it. I used the cutout type along with the negative image, and stenciled "hamburger". You can tell I'm a Clint Eastwood fan even though I tweaked the quote. The background was layers of paint, stamping, gesso and alcohol inks.

This print is available on Fine Art America in a variety of forms and sizes.


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Life Long Dreams Can Come True Even After 40 Years

Art Consoles, 8 x 10, mixed media collage
"Art is to console those who are broken by life." - Vincent van Gogh

My first ever real gallery exhibit is up and running through the month of October! I've dreamed of this for years. The opening reception last night was wonderful and so encouraging, a real confidence booster. The support from my family and friends was everything I could ask for, not only at the opening, but also in the preparation for the show and the kind words of encouragement from them and my facebook community. Thank you all so much! I appreciated it more than words can say.

The pictures are posted on my facebook page. I will be doing a series of posts over the next month or two on many of the pictures in the exhibit that include the stories and lessons the pictures are meant to convey as well as the process leading up to the show.

I hung the following explanation of my art exhibit and include it here to explain the underlying theme of pretty much all of my art. I love that my husband calls it "art that talks," and would have made that the title of this exhibit if he had said it before I sent the info off for advertising. Oh well, "Soul Gazing" also works.

Soul Gazing

 With her art education, graphic design background, and her passionate love of quotes, Susan K. Leslie builds mixed media collages that are expressive of her life journey, documenting powerful insights gained along the way. Early exposure to artists such as Kathe Kollwitz, Georges Roualt, Edward Munch, and others invoked in Susan emotional reactions, enabling her to strongly identify with others, easing her sense of loneliness and isolation, while influencing her desire to help others in a similar manner. Her husband calls it "art that talks".
"Anything and everything is fodder for an art piece. It's not about the tools of line, shape, color, texture, composition, etc. It's about the lesson, the message that is clamouring to get out. I believe every piece of art is the result of a desire to connect with others in a meaningful way. Emotional response is what every "artist" is looking for regardless of the vehicle used, be it fine art, music, writing, dance, crafts, even advertising and graffiti. I see the creative effort as a subconscious attempt to ease one's own loneliness and feelings of disconnectedness, while simultaneously sharing, and hopefully easing that of the viewer. In essence art is therapeutic.

"What really matters is if the viewer "feels" something that causes them to gain understanding, to think, to identify with others, and in that identification, be eased and comforted knowing that they are not alone. There is someone else out there who feels like they do. They can feel related, a part of humanity, important, valid in their existence. They may not be able to put it into words for it is often a subconscious thing, but we all want to matter to someone else.

"My art at its most basic level is meant to say, "I see you. I have gazed upon your soul and identified with you on a deep level. You are not isolated, invisible, nor unimportant. You matter. I feel with you. I see you."

Art is wonderful therapy. "I usually have a general idea when starting a piece, but it quickly takes on a life of its own, telling me what images to include, what colors to use, what technique will work best. I just jump into the flow and ride the wave. When I step back to take a look at the end result, something miraculous has happened. I find meaning that I didn't consciously put into the work. My subconscious takes over in the process and I learn much about myself and life after the work is done. I love that part.

"Soul gazing—observation of self and others—has become a tool, helping me to make sense of life in general and my life in particular. It is how I choose to connect with myself and with humanity, establishing relationships with the world around me and all it contains, while contributing back into my community through my artwork.

"There are whole essays buried in these works, which is actually my next major project—to marry in book form the pictures with the essays from my daily journaling—a contribution to my family and community for posterity."
Framing - I ended up making the frames for all the larger pieces. Not having done this particular task before, I found it had a rather steep learning curve and was highly frustrating at times. The end product turned out far from perfect. However, I will let you read the following bit on framing to get the whole picture.

Philosophy of Framing - Adapt and Adjust

 Framing my own art turned out to be a monumental task, for which I am actually grateful. I struggled with wanting to put out perfect frames. We all like to put our best foot forward in order that others may see the best side of us. In the process I realized that perfect frames obviously weren't going to happen with the time, money, help, materials, and tools I had to work with at the time, not to mention my lack of experience.

I realized I could give in to depression and stress about the situation, or I could choose to accept the analogy to life in general and go with it. I chose to intentionally incorporate imperfections into the frames, even though there is great personal risk involved that viewers would not get the "message." To me that is an unacceptable reason for refusing to take such a risk, however vulnerable it would leave me to the possible criticism and judgment of others.

When I look at this body of work as a whole, imperfect framing provides an underpinning for the overall message of the show, bringing it together in an amazing way. The decision to use these imperfections to intentionally accentuate and drive home the connection that exists within this body of art provides an example of adapting and adjusting, which I see as cornerstones of the artistic process as well as the problem-solving skills needed to live life. That is a big part of what "soul gazing" is all about to me. With that said, these are some things I learned or was reminded of through this framing process:
1) Life itself is never perfect, even though we all experience perfect moments here and there.
2) You have to work with whatever is available to you at the moment.
3) Dreams rarely turn out the way you think they will. This is often a good thing.
4) It's important to learn how to accept less than perfection, while doing the best that you can in that moment.
5) Lessons are everywhere, if one will dare to look below the surface to find hidden truths.
6) Have the courage to go with the flow and not worry about what others will think of you.
7) Everything is okay. Life is filled with trial and error. It's often necessary to "patch" things, while recognizing that some patches work better than others.
8) It's okay to allow others to see you as less than perfect. They know it anyway.
9) Accepting life's imperfections does not mean you are not doing your best, nor is it an excuse for not trying to do your best.
10) Imperfections are the norm in life. Acceptance allows learning and growth in understanding while building character and strength that enables you to withstand the inevitable storms of life everyone experiences.
11) Like everything else in life, art and framing are not really exact sciences, but rather, are indicative of the fluidness of life; and a reminder that balance is not a static thing, but something we must constantly work at on an individual level.
12) Whenever you try something new and you give it your best shot, be proud of yourself! You did it! Next time will be better.
13) Accepting and embracing imperfection makes room for joy in being you, allowing that joy to spill over to others, and what's not to love about enjoying life and sharing it with others?
Would love your comments below.