Two people are having a conversation. A dog enters the room. One person loves dogs, sometimes even more than people, and this dog is so friendly, wagging and saying hello. The other person doesn’t like dogs, had no animals as a child, and finds all that wagging and head bobbing disturbing and maybe threatening. Do they see the same dog? They’ll both agree they see a dog, even a brown dog, but it isn’t the same dog. If you’ll concede that through each other’s eyes the dog would be unrecognizable, consider it also applies to the room, the sky, the car one of them is so proud of, and even to each other’s faces, so different from what they see themselves in the mirror.
Politics makes it obvious, people seemingly are living on different planets while inhabiting the same space, but it's revealed in more than the alternative facts on the evening news. The most obvious difference in individual perception has to do with attention to detail, how much information is extracted from any given scene. The native american of the southwest probably sees a bit more in a desert landscape than a typical tourist, peering through tinted glass while doing seventy five across what appears to them a wasteland, but it's also true for two passengers on a bus sitting side by side. After the sensitivity has been determined, there are individual preferences concerning what to scan for. Some folks are only interested in essentials, navigating rush hour traffic and driving a hard bargain, while others tend to notice colors, highlights and shadows, the texture and mood of their surroundings. These are generally the artists and their fans.
The second group reaches out to the first by making art, presenting an invitation to open some of the closed doors in the skull. The first group appreciates this enough, once they've gone through a few doors, to share some of their efficiently gathered loot. For many loosely allied reasons, pubic and private, this transaction has been gaining traction recently. The human spirit doesn’t appreciate being squeezed down into brand-loyal consumer units, and a reckoning is at hand. Words are dead. The doublespeak of advertising bestows love on kitchen products, and politics has muddied the waters even more.
Artists make pictures that anyone can see in their own way, yet to all they’re a signpost to a fuller awareness and understanding of the tangible reality we all inhabit. There's ample testimony that living with a favorite painting influences how the world is perceived. Having art around makes the evening light turn lemon yellow, more wildlife appears on drives in the country, and with greater discernment, even the news that's ‘between the lines‘ starts coming through.
Quality of life has become an issue, now that competitive efficiency has everyone stretched thin to keep up, so many anxious, feeling depleted and dissatisfied by the canned gratifications streaming up from their device. Something seems to be missing. What happened to the blue of the sky, the taste of a cooked meal, or the little burst of joy at the first crocus coming through the snow? The list goes on. In this peculiar liquid point in history, when the increasing current seems to indicate a waterfall up ahead, the art on the wall becomes a lifesaver, a flotation ring to hold on to. Spend a little money and get something nice.
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