Artistic expression and aesthetic experience

At some point in our evolutionary past, we became artists.

We began to wonder and ask questions about our relationships to one another and to our environment. We came to realize that words could not effectively communicate all that we see and feel and found new forms of expression. Song, dance, poetry, sculpture, and pictures gave us new ways of seeing and listening—new ways to share what we felt and understood about our world.

We became artists because the human brain is attracted to interesting patterns, novelty, beauty, and mystery, and this is the language of the arts. We became artists because works of art can affect us in profound ways—impacting us physiologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The visual arts can highlight aspects of reality we might not otherwise notice, and allow us to transcend the mundane and see a different reality, a different truth. The visual arts can amuse, educate, persuade, provoke, and beautify. They can speak to our emotions and converse with our minds, stimulate our consciousness and challenge conventions.

Why do certain paintings draw me to them again and again? What gives visual art such power? How we respond to a painting is strongly subjective, influenced by culture and experience, but perhaps our responses are also influenced by our biology. Perhaps our brains have evolved to notice and react to particular stimuli that are accentuated in works of art. Neuroaesthetics is a field of scientific research that employs various imaging techniques to examine how our brains create and react to creative works of art—asking why it is that people find certain artworks pleasurable and beautiful, intriguing and captivating.

Artistic expression may indeed have roots in our evolutionary past. There may be biological reasons why we find certain images, sounds, and movement attractive, and why certain forms of creativity are pleasing to me but not to you. Artificial Intelligence-programs may someday produce an algorithm to create universally desirable art, but for now, what I am sure of is that regardless of variation in artistic taste, the human brain is drawn to aesthetic experiences, and artistic expression is part of being human.

For now, I simply paint what is pleasing to me.

Peace . . .