The Hand Rewrites the Brain

adult learning, art, brain plasticity, cognitive decline, Creativity, Faith, Health, inspiration, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Ministry, Painting, Pergamum, perspective, Turkey, vision

Aristotle once said, “The hand is the tool of tools.” Our hands with their opposable thumbs are an evolutionary miracle. Our opposable thumbs evolved around two million years ago, even before humans began to make tools. Our hands helped us to develop language and procure nourishment, as well as create mysterious images on cave walls which united the physical and spiritual worlds of our distant ancestors.

Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos (Cave of Hands) upon Río Pinturas, near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina (2005) (image by Mariano via Wikimedia Commons)

Richard Rohr, the Catholic priest and spiritual writer, notes “only the contemplative mind can help bring forward the new consciousness needed to awaken a more loving, just, and sustainable world. We need a practice that touches our unconscious conditioning where all our wounds and defense mechanisms lie. That’s the only way we can be changed at any significant or lasting level.”

We have many spiritual practices to change our hearts and minds, such as prayer, meditation, contemplation, reading Scripture, and hearing the word preached. Attending holy communion and practicing the presence of God are other ways to be transformed. In art or faith, we don’t take anything at face value, but we seek the deeper meanings in the experiences we have with life.

Image I took while walking downtown. I paid attention to the composition when I took the photograph.

As one who slacked off my weight training over the pandemic, the gym rat saying holds true: “Use it or lose it.” We can lose muscle tone and aerobic capacity in just a few days if we’re older or recovering from injuries. Even if we’re young and healthy, we may lose capacity in a week or so. Likewise, some of us get our diplomas and never read a book again. For instance, 42% of college graduates never read another book after college and only 32% of the US population over the age of 16 reads books for pleasure.

One of the problems even in the USA is 52% of adults read at a 7^th grade level or below, and 48% read at an 8^th grade level and above. Yet reading has many benefits for keeping the brain healthy:

Reading for just six minutes daily can reduce stress levels by 68%.
Reading can increase empathy and emotional intelligence.
Reading can improve sleep quality.
Reading can increase vocabulary and improve writing skills.
Reading can improve mental focus and concentration.
Reading can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

When we connect the brain and the hand, this results in increased activation of the nerve cells in the sensory and motor hand representational areas. As a consequence, the hand expands its representational area in the cortical hand map because it requires more brain resources, more ‘brain space’. Thus, the hand can ‘shape’ the brain; in other words, the brain is functionally shaped based on the hand’s experiences.

“Crop Doctor, Agronomist or Crop Doctor for Yardup. Checking on crops for disease, insects and nutrition.” © Phoebe Milne

If the hand, in contrast, is passive and immobile for a long time, its representation in the brain decreases and may totally disappear. Quite simply, the hand has to be active to maintain its representation in the brain: “use it or lose it.” On the other hand, we know the hand representation in the brain can be re-established by training and manual activities.

What sort of activity rebuilds the brain? The brain cortex contains more than 100 billion nerve cells and innumerable synaptic connections. The cortical body map is not fixed or hardwired, but can rapidly become reorganized as a result of a strengthening or weakening of the synaptic connections. Moreover, repetitive movements can overwhelm the hand and cause trauma, such as writer’s cramp. We need to find ways to exercise our hand, so we cause no harm, but build the brain pathways.

The hand has been called the “outer brain.”

In aging samples, for instance, there’s evidence to indicate that age‐related cognitive decline may be partly driven by a process of atrophy. Some studies have shown that adopting a less engaging lifestyle across the lifespan may accelerate loss of cognitive function11, due to lower “cognitive reserve” (the ability of the brain to withstand insult from age and/or pathology)12. Some emerging evidence indicates that disengaging from the “real world” in favor of virtual settings may similarly induce adverse neurocognitive changes.

Extensive media multi‐tasking during childhood and adolescence could also negatively impact cognitive development through indirect means, by reducing engagement with academic and social activities, as well as by interfering with sleep35, or reducing the opportunity to engage in creative thinking36, 37. I remember telling my schoolteacher mother, “Listening to the radio helps me concentrate on my homework.” She wasn’t buying that argument at all, and radio silence prevailed.

An important aspect of instant access to the internet is our ability to get information online, which has caused us to become more likely to remember where these facts could be retrieved, rather than to remember the facts themselves. This results in our becoming reliant on the Internet for information retrieval. For instance, most people no longer memorize telephone numbers anymore, but depend upon their phones to maintain their contact lists through the cloud, just as we once stored them on the internal SIM card. I personally don’t know anyone’s phone number anymore because I depend on my phone’s contact list. If it ever died on me, I’d be out of luck! The cloud better recognize me if I ever need to replace my phone.

Asklepion, Pergamum, Turkey: site of healing waters, temples, and cultural events, for pilgrims who would often stay for weeks. The ancients believed healing was a sacred art and people’s souls needed to be mended as well as their bodies.

Art and healing are intimately connected. The new Alice Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas, will integrate the arts in an intentional way. The students will be classically trained medical doctors who also will be equipped with knowledge to address all areas of wellness, whether it’s spiritual, emotional or social.

The science of neuroaesthetics is detailed in Susan Magsamen’s book, Your Brain on Art. She said the field can be described as the study of how art measurably influences the brain, body and behavior. The study of neuroaesthetics is “neuroarts.” Magsamen said the pursuit of creative expression is as important to humans as nutrition, sleep and exercise.

There are four parts of neuroaesthetics and “the aesthetic mindset:”

■ Being open to curiosity.

■ Playful exploration.

■ Sensory experiences.

■ Becoming a maker and beholder.

We discover this in art class when we want to draw or paint a picture beyond our skill level or the time limits of the work period. In seminary, we’d have three-hour final exams. Some of our fellow students would prepare six-hour answers to the advance sample questions our professors gave us to study. I always practiced the “triage method” of reducing everything we learned to the essentials. If we pick out the most important facts, we can best make our points in the time limits given. In the emergency room, doctors treat the most important issues first to save the patient’s life and tend to the details once the patient is out of the woods. No one can give a 6 hour answer in a 3 hour time limit. Ask yourself, “What’s the most important question here?”

The same idea works in drawing or painting. We need to find the main forms and sketch them in before we get carried away with the tiny details. Mike showed me a great photo he took of the corvettes in Memphis. I suggested if he wanted to do this painting in a single class meeting, he needed to simplify it by enlarging it, so it had much less detail or plan on taking two classes to finish it. He chose to paint a mushroom in the wild instead. Even then he noticed his mushroom cap lacked the perspective to look realistic on a two-dimensional surface. We’ll have to pick up some perspective lessons in the fall again.

This is a drawing from memory I made on my iPad. I stripped Mike’s photo down to the barest essentials. The vehicles may not even be recognized as sports cars, but they are convertibles. I do remember the great steel triangles of a bridge or other structure where the cars were parked. I did this in about 15 minutes, but I have over half a century of experience of seeing and drawing practice.

Internet image of corvettes on Beale Street

I sometimes forget my hand and brain have been trained to see the basic shapes “instantly.” Not because of some DNA of pure sight, but because I’ve practiced looking, dissecting, and memorizing what I see. Some of my experiences are blind drawing, which means I only look at the object, but never the drawing itself. This trains the hand to only go as far as the eye can “see.”

Gail had the class over to her home and we were glad to see her in recovery mode. Since she’s still homebound, we took advantage of the good weather and her front porch to exercise our brains and hands.

Ansel Adams: Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, 1933-1942

Gail had a mountain landscape image from a screenshot she wanted to work with. The focus of our class was taking our camera photographs and using the editing software to heighten our images. Once we’d done that, we would see more clearly what was important in our image. The current theme in social media is “no filter,” but the great photographers of history always gone to the dark room to develop their photos and dodge the whites lighter or burn more black. Ansel Adams was a master at this.

Cornelia: Prang 8 color box on Arches paper, from original photograph

Notice on my short watercolor study, I didn’t bother to include the whole photograph image. I “triaged” the details I couldn’t complete in our short class time. I mixed my own blacks, rather than using the pan color available. This gave me much richer colors and more variation in my shadows. I had outlined my basic shapes in yellow, but got to talking about the others’ directions and let the paint dry too much, or I would have picked it up better. It would have been less noticeable. I see now some of my lights could have been lighter. I can go back with a clean brush full of water and pick up some of that front face of the archway.

Of course, my eye sees more than most people can see, and it’s both a curse and a blessing. I’m always graceful with my students and try to give at least half as much grace to myself. We mustn’t get discouraged, but keep pressing upward! We don’t have to be a master at something to be a maker; we just have to do it. Having no fixed expectations of an outcome is the best way to exhibit creative expression. Following the less traveled path can lead to new destinations and new discoveries.

Art has the capacity to heal, to cross-fertilize, and to challenge fixed ideas. Art can’t be confined to gallery spaces or the walls of our homes. Art can not only renew our brains, but also the practice of art can renew how we see the world because we learn to see it afresh. Sometimes for the first time, we see it as we’ve never seen it before, and then we bring our own experience and expression to what we have seen. That’s when we become artists, creators, and cocreators guided by the hand of God. As we are made in the image of the creating God, God heals us as he cares for the creation:

“I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
I will lead them and repay them with comfort,
creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips.
Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the LORD;
and I will heal them.” ~~ Isaiah 57:18-19

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

The Tool of Tools and the Form of Forms – 3 Wisdoms | Scott Randall Paine

The Tool of Tools and the Form of Forms

59 Reading Statistics and Facts You Should Know

https://www.abtaba.com/blog/59-reading-statistics

What’s the latest U.S. literacy rate?

What’s the latest U.S. literacy rate?

How the Hand Shapes the Brain, Hand Surgery Department of Clinical Sciences, Malmö Lund University Skäne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden

How the Hand Shapes the Brain

NOTES FROM—The “online brain”: how the Internet may be changing our cognition –https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502424/

11. Hultsch DF, Hertzog C, Small BJ et al. Use it or lose it: engaged lifestyle as a buffer of cognitive decline in aging? Psychol Aging 1999;14:245‐63. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

12. Small BJ, Dixon RA, McArdle JJ et al. Do changes in lifestyle engagement moderate cognitive decline in normal aging? Evidence from the Victoria Longitudinal Study. Neuropsychology 2012;26:144‐55. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

25–Uncapher MR, Wagner AD. Minds and brains of media multitaskers: current findings and future directions. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2018;115:9889‐96. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

35. van Der Schuur WA, Baumgartner SE, Sumter SR et al. The consequences of media multitasking for youth: a review. Comput Human Behav 2015;53:204‐15. [Google Scholar]

36. Altmann EM, Trafton JG, Hambrick DZ. Momentary interruptions can derail the train of thought. J Exp Psychol Gen 2014;143:215‐26. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

37. Baird B, Smallwood J, Mrazek MD et al. Inspired by distraction: mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychol Sci 2012;23:1117‐22. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Researcher Talks of Arts Benefits

https://ao.pressreader.com/article/281908778227901

The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture,

By Frank R. Wilson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/reviews/hand.htm

Inspired by Autumn Leaves

adult learning, art, Attitudes, autumn leaves, cognitive decline, Creativity, Enneagram, Imagination, inspiration, Matisse, Ministry, Painting, Spirituality, trees, Van Gogh

I returned from a spiritual retreat at Mount Eagle, at which we studied the Enneagram. This is our United Methodist camp site dedicated to holy listening. Of the nine spiritual personality types, I happen to be a Four: The Creative. I’m “The Sensitive, Introspective Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental.” Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They’re emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but also can be moody and self-conscious. Fours sometimes feel vulnerable and defective, so they’ll withdraw from others, and they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. A Four typically has problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity; but at their best, they’re inspired and highly creative, and they’re able to renew themselves and transform their experiences.

One of the things I’ve learned over my years of teaching art is every student is unique. They all aren’t Creative Fours, even if they have an interest in art. When I taught in schools, some of the students didn’t even have an interest in art at all. It was a requirement, and they were unwilling prisoners, who were set on rebellion because they knew they wouldn’t succeed. In most education classes, this would be true. Art education classes teach young teachers how to make lesson plans with distinct outcomes and a list of steps. This makes grading easy: did the student follow the steps and how close did their product match the model?

I don’t teach art this way. Children learn to walk by crawling, but they have to roll over and pull up first. Each step is an improvement over the first one. As long as a student keeps working and learning, their work will improve. We adults have to silence the judgmental voices in our heads that tells us, “You aren’t any good.” Instead, let’s listen to that inner voice of joy which says, “Wow, we’re having fun playing with the colors and making shapes appear—it’s like magic!”

We first looked at a few images of leaf paintings to get some ideas. Often by Friday morning, my brain needs some extra caffeine as well as extra jolts of creative input to get an inspired thought to percolate through the fog. We don’t all learn just by listening, but by seeing also. Sometimes students need a demonstration or hands-on experience to figure out the best way to use the materials. I always try to let them manipulate the materials themselves, since the best way to learn is by doing. This isn’t brain surgery, so we won’t harm anyone. We also won’t lose our salvation if the paint gets out of hand. We can always save our old works and say, “Look where I started from!”

Tim was entranced by the Yayoi Kusama Leaf painting (1990), so he began to work on drawing a leaf in this manner. He’s recovering from carpal tunnel surgery, so smaller movements are better therapy for his hand.

Not everyone is focused on details. Milton Avery is a modern colorist who simplifies the landscape into its essential elements. His trees often look like large leaves.

The bright colors of the autumn leaves in the landscape provided Mike’s color scheme for his one brilliant tree. Mike has exuberance in all he does.

Henri Rousseau was famed for his jungle scenes. These were green in every shade possible. He visited the botanical gardens in Paris for his inspiration.

Van Gogh favored yellow and orange, especially in his later years. The Mulberry Tree from 1889 is a lovely example.

Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena, CA

Gail went outside to grab an actual leaf, rather than work from her imagination. She has a direct connection with nature, maybe because of her years with the national parks.

Repeating this leaf shape, she covered the canvas with it, allowing it to overlap in some areas and run off the edges in others. Using a monochromatic color scheme, she gave the illusion of shadows and light.

Matisse sought to reunify humans with each other and with nature. As the great painter said, “What I dream of is a balanced, pure and quiet art which can avoid the trouble of frustrating subjects. This kind of art gives everyone’s mind peace and comfort, like a comfortable chair where they can have a rest when tired.”

Viewers in Matisse’s day thought his brightly colored painting of dancers was quite daring, but today we can appreciate his work as an ode to life, joy and nature.

As I’ve been watching the brisk winds blow the gold and red leaves from the trees this fall, I’ve also watched them dance against the bright cerulean sky. When the sun shines on these dancers, they glow even brighter than before. They don’t have a care for tomorrow, much less for today. Now and this moment is enough for them. They remind me of the Lord’s advice to us on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:34—

“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

I painted the back side of the leaves with a thin coat of acrylic paint and laid them one by one down on the white surface of the canvas. Then I gently hand rubbed the top of each leaf until I thought I’d transferred the paint. The hansa yellow was least successful as a print color, so I over printed it at the end. I mixed the green ground with the cerulean blue and two yellows. The sky has cerulean, violet, Ultramarine, and white. These I mixed as I painted, so the sky wasn’t an even color. (All skies change color due to atmosphere and distance: they get lighter toward the horizon).

Next Friday we’re going to make stamp prints. You may have cut your own design in a potato once upon a time in scouts or used vegetables to make prints. We can also use leaves, natural materials, metal objects, or found objects to create prints. Art is a time to explore and experiment. We’ll find out what works and what doesn’t!! Curiosity and the willingness to experiment and explore are all aspects of creativity. We can all learn to stretch our boundaries and learn resilience, which are experiences that help us address the stresses and challenges of daily life.

I learn something new every day. Today I learned a starfish has a brain that covers its entire body. Its whole body is made up of brain nodes! There are days I wish I were a starfish: I would have loads of brain cells!

Joy, peace, and happiness to everyone!

Cornelia

Type Four: The Individualist — The Enneagram Institute

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-4

The 9 Enneagram Types — The Enneagram Institute

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

Art Analysis: Dance by Henri Matisse – Artsper Magazine

Art Analysis: Dance by Henri Matisse

Texture Paintings

adult learning, Aristotle, art, autumn leaves, beauty, brain plasticity, cognitive decline, Creativity, flowers, Holy Spirit, Imagination, Leonardo da Vinci, Painting, renewal, Uncategorized, vision

I don’t do wine painting classes. Since I teach in a United Methodist Church, our Wesleyan temperance tradition holds sway: we serve no alcohol. However, out in the world beyond there are classes where everyone drinks wine and paints the same image. They’re out for fellowship purposes more than for art, but these classes serve to get people started in the basic techniques of the media. Students copy the teacher’s model painting, often working along as the teacher instructs the class. This is the “show and tell” style of teaching, which usually results in most students’ works approximating the teacher’s example.

Wine painting classes: One Lion to Rule Them All

College art education classes often are taught this way, but art classes in art schools are never taught like this. Why you might ask? Because art schools exist to help students find their own voice, for they know copying another’s style only diminishes a student’s true voice. The creative spirit within each of us is unique,
breathed into us by a holy God. Ecclesiastes 12:7 reminds us at our end, “the breath (Spirit) returns to God who gave it.” If art students are copying any art works, their teachers are humble enough to send their students to the masters first, or to life itself.

Laguna College of Art and Design art class

Art, like golf, is a humbling experience. In both we’re always playing against our handicap: we want to be “Perfect,” but we weren’t given the means to accomplish this goal without God’s grace. We go on to perfection by degrees, with the help of God, if we don’t get lazy and take the shortcuts, as the Adam and Eve, Prodigal Son, and many other great stories tell. As Jesus reminds his followers in Matthew 23:11-12—

“The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Why is it difficult to draw from life? Or for that matter, to really look hard at a painting to copy it? From an early age, most of us are taught it’s impolite to stare. In some cultures, even looking directly into the eyes of another person as you speak is unacceptable behavior. I know my parents taught me to look at them when I was in trouble, even when I wanted to look down in shame. I had to face their anger. While I didn’t enjoy it as a child, it prepared me as a teen for hateful comments from my peers, and as an adult for discrimination in the workplace. I could look people in the eye and call them out. This is likely why our early teenage children roll and flutter their eyes at us when we call them to account. They “look at us” without “looking.” And why we say, “Look me in the eye!”

19th century humorous postcard: The Artist’s Studio

We also have thoughts running through our heads: our to do lists, our concerns about our friends and loved ones, as well as the woes of the world stage. The more we learn to focus on the present moment in which we find ourselves, the better off we are. I find when I can pay attention to my colors, patterns, and how they come together on the canvas, I forget everything else.

I have some artist friends who always have a glass of wine in the studio, since it helps them relax. I think they just like wine. I’m a coffee lover, but too much caffeine makes my hand jittery, and too much wine would make my hand sloppy. I personally believe in moderation in all things, but then I’m sold on Aristotle’s “golden mean,” or the “Goldilocks zone,” where

“at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue.”

We barely avoided the 15th government shutdown since 1981, but we now have a House majority without a Leader due to a few extremist members. These Republican Party members who are “pirates who take no prisoners and make no compromises” might want to catch up on their ancient philosophical reading before chaos ensues. Sometimes life imitates art: if you have MAX, you can watch Michael Cain in “Our Flag Means Death.”

All creativity improves with either time or wine. Both allow you to loosen up and not control what happens but go with the flow of what happens on the canvas, instead of forcing the paint to go where you want it to be. I have canvases which began in one direction and ended up in quite another. I can only say my original idea was rejected by the painting in progress, for I had to “listen to what the painting wanted to become.” As Psalms 104:30 says:

“When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.”

In case you’re wondering, the “ground” of a canvas is the white primer, so it’s not a stretch to say, God’s Spirit works through us to renew the face of the “ground.” Some texts translate this as the “earth,” and God’s Spirit also works through us to restore and renew our planet to health after all the damage from industrial pollution and man made climate changes.

Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance genius, claimed, “There are three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” We can all learn to see. How we learn to see takes time and effort. This is why I always talk about some examples of good art before we begin our work. I know most people haven’t seen the masters, so getting images in mind is important. A little art history lesson never hurt anyone. Then I explain the project and we get to work. Stephen King, the noted author, says this about the creative experience: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

In class we were using the flower arrangement which had been residing in the kitchen fridge for the past several weeks. I don’t know who to thank for it, but we put it back where we found it. Our group was given the key to use patterns and textures in the work.
Tim wants to learn to draw from life better, but he was struggling to get his proportions to scale. I showed him the trade skill of using a pencil or part of his hand to measure part of the object and compare its size to another part.

We give away our secret sauce recipe all the time! Everyone knows how to multiply with a ruler for a scale drawing, but that idea often doesn’t occur to them if they aren’t using it on a flat plane. If they have no real ruler, the idea of using an ordinary object as a measuring device also doesn’t enter our brains. This is normal, but once upon a time, we used our bodies to measure the work in progress: a cubit was the distance from the elbow to the middle fingertip and a hand-width was just that: the width of the four fingers. Over the years these were standardized to 18 inches and 4 inches. Horses are still measured in hands today, but we moderns measure in feet and meters rather than cubits.

Gail lined out some lovely patterns on her canvas and made good progress on her painting. She always gets a good plan and executes it.

Mike was glad to be back after doing renewal work/manual labor. This creative exercise of moving bold colors and strong patterns around his canvas was a welcome respite after all that physical activity. A mental challenge seemed welcome to him.

I had done a pattern piece in the week before, so I enjoyed painting the still life, and may use it as a study for something larger later.

We finished up our works on the second session. Tim reworked the pumpkin drawing from an earlier time and Gail finished up her texture painting of the flowers. Mike dropped in with Van Gogh books before going out on an errand of mercy to rescue a young client. He was impressed with the amount of blue clothing the people wore in Van Gogh’s paintings. I reminded him the very denim jeans we wear first came from Nimes, France. We call these “jeans,” because the weavers in France were trying to imitate the techniques of Genoa, Italy, but failed, and made instead the sturdy fabric that’s blue outside and white inside. Hence, “jeane de Nimes.”

“I did not know that!” He exclaimed.

Art is for wondering, for seeing new things, for opening up our minds to new realities and new possibilities. Whenever we go beyond what we already know, we open a new brain pathway and create new connections between the neurons. This keeps our minds agile and staves off the worst aspect of aging: the pessimistic belief that nothing is new under the sun. If we keep the optimism of a child, for whom everything is the newest and best, we’ll keep a youthful heart and spread joy wherever we go.

Joy and Peace,

Cornelia

The ‘Golden Mean’: Aristotle’s Guide to Living Excellently —Philosophy Break
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/the-golden-mean-aristotle-guide-to-living-excellently/

Weights & Measures
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/weights-measures

History of Denim & the Origin of Jeans
https://www.hawthornintl.com/history-of-denim

Welcome to My World

adult learning, architecture, art, Creativity, Habits, Imagination, Painting, shadows, vision

I’m currently reading Noah Gordon’s The Physician, the story of a Christian masquerading as a Jew so he can study in the ancient medical school in Persia during the Middle Ages. Authors have to describe their characters and the world they inhabit in order for the reader to imagine a realistic place, even if the location could only exist in the imagination. I find this book a great escape from the histrionics of the recent news cycles.

An artist who wants to render a three dimensional scene on a two dimensional surface has the extra challenge of learning a new visual language to describe the scene. Drawing in perspective is a brand new way of seeing and rendering a multidimensional world on a flat surface so the appearance of depth and solidity is realized. In some paintings, the artist’s style of painting depicts objects with photographically realistic detail. These works can “fool the eye” of the viewer.

The realism of Gerrit Dou’s “The Doctor” allows us to see the portrait of the physician through a window niche. The bas relief sculptural rendering on the wall is partly covered by a luxurious rug, on which a burnished copper dish rests. The window behind the Doctor adds a back light, but he uses the primary light from the niche opening to observe the liquid in the specimen container. His assistant is in the dimmer light of the background. We are looking through this window and watching him pursue his calling.

In other art works, the “realism” isn’t so much concerned with photographic accuracy, but with the emotional experience of the space rendered. The Scream, painted in 1893 by Edvard Munch, uses classical one point perspective to introduce the sensation of depth with the bridge. The two people walking away balance the one facing forward, who screams from the gut. The colors and shapes of the landscape are emotional reflections of the interior, psychic experiences of the screamer.

In art class last year, we had several lessons on perspective. Most students, no matter what their age, dislike these basic lessons. They want to jump right in and learn to paint a still life, figure, landscape, or a building. Unfortunately, if they jump over these basic instructions in drawing, they struggle to set a form in space or have difficulty getting the proportions of the objects correct in relation to eschew other. Art school students usually have have an entire semester class devoted to the multiple forms of perspective. I remember drawing the overhead pipes, book shelves, the corners of rooms, and anything else that had a vanishing point.

Black and White Sketch of Geometric Figures

Perspective teaches us how to see by eliminating the extraneous and unnecessary information and concentrating instead on only the simplest and essential forms and lines. We can hold our paint brush handle up to the objects to measure them. This helps us know if the cone is twice the height of the cube, or 2.5 times. When we lay in our first sketch in a pale yellow wash, we don’t worry if it isn’t exact, we can adjust it with the paint. Why don’t we draw it in pencil? This tool tends to confine our creativity, since we’re used to small movements for writing and filling in correct answers from our school days. It has an eraser, so we struggle to get it “right.” Then we don’t paint with our hearts, but mechanically fill in the lines of a paint by number design.

Last week I was sick, and when I came back from the dead, others were down for the count, working the polls, or working in the salt mines. Gail and I were the only ones in attendance. She’d had the benefit of doing this lesson before, so I suggested we take the setup as a springboard for our imagination. We looked at some modern architecture, which depend on geometric forms for their design interest. One that caught our eye was a simple stacked design of rectangular blocks in a smoky atmosphere: Charles Willard Moore’s “Late Entry to the Tribune Tower Competition, Perspective,” 1980.

When we got busy painting, I put on Dvorak’s New World Symphony, since we were creating a new world for our new buildings to inhabit (the link below is to you tube, if you want to listen along). I also ate a few Girl Scout Samoas, since I bought several cookie boxes from Gail. They reside in the freezer now so I don’t eat them all before Easter. I’m sure Gail can supply you if you want cookies.

While painting, I often lose track of time, perhaps because I enter into this “other world” of my creation. I focus on the image I see and the image I paint on the canvas. My problems fade away, for all I can think about are how to bring the form closer to the foreground: do I need a lighter, brighter color or do I need to change the direction of my brush stroke too? I may need to darken the shape behind or the shadow below it to best evoke the depth of space. Sometimes just a line across the back is enough to set the objects in space, but if we’re trying to build a new world, we might have to indicate some form of landscape.

We talked about the science fiction movies which invent an entire language complete with syntax and vocabulary for the various peoples and architecture suitable for their worlds. If we lived on a planet of crystalline structures, we’d always see the individual parts of white light. Then we’d be people who analyzed the world about us and looked for multiple meanings in the simplest of sayings. If we lived on a hot desert world, we might yearn for cool, dark places, so caves would be our preferred dwelling places. There’s a home for each person, for as Jesus reminded his disciples in John 14:2—

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

What is real, you ask, and what is true? What comes from the heart and mind of the artist is real and true. It may not be of high quality, but proficiency comes from putting your true self into your work, without holding back. As the hand gains competence, the heart and mind have to struggle to remain true to the unique person who creates the work. The great danger is we become proficient at pleasing others for the sake of fame or fortune. Then we make pretty pictures, which will decorate walls and match furniture, but we may not reach the depths of the human heart and emotion required to produce lasting works of art.

None of us in our art class are here for fame and glory, yet we are progressing as the weeks go by. I like the rich texture of Gail’s Martian landscape and the red dust filled atmosphere of her painting. The odd geometric shapes look right at home on the extra planetary body. My landscape has a spring fondant look of a non-Lenten pilgrimage hostel or BNB. If anyone wants to journey elsewhere, the road is open before us, and is limited only by our imagination. Art class is where we let our minds stretch to consider the impossible and then create a structure to take us there. This is why VISION, HOPE, and OPTIMISM are also part of the artist’s toolbox.

Trompe-l’œil Painting
https://jhna.org/articles/gerrit-dous-enchanting-trompe-loeil-virtuosity-agency-in-early-modern-collections/

Gerrit Dou, The Doctor, 1653, oil on panel, 49.3 x 37 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. GG 592. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY (artwork in the public domain)

Edward Munch: The Scream
https://www.edvardmunch.org/the-scream.jsp

Dvorak: New World Symphony
https://youtu.be/Qut5e3OfCvg

Mountains and Molehills

adult learning, art, Attitudes, beauty, Creativity, Faith, Fear, Imagination, Love, Ministry, Painting, purpose, renewal, Right Brain, righteousness, seashells, shadows, United Methodist Church, vision

I’m one of the world’s worst worriers. I can make a mountain out of a molehill. This doesn’t bode well for living life to the fullest, for none of us know for certain what’s coming up around the corner, much less further down the road. This knowledge paralyses some of us, so that some of us cannot make choices until we have more information.

The fear of making a poor choice keeps some of us confined to our beds, for what happens if we get out on the wrong side of the bed? Our whole day might be ruined. We’ll choose to stay in bed, rather than risk making this first bad choice of many. After all, there’s no sense of starting a day that will only go downhill from the gitgo.

In times of stress, I have repeated this sentence as if it were a mantra:
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;
for fear has to do with punishment,
and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”
~~ 1 John 4:18

When faced with a blank canvas, we all have choices. If we use a pencil to draw the shapes, then we try to fill in the exact lines, even though we may not have yet found the perfection of form of the object we are representing. I always recommend drawing the general shape of the subject matter with a brush dipped in a wash of yellow paint. This helps the artist do two things: set the general composition and forms on the canvas, and provide an opportunity to correct any first misperceptions, since the pale yellow is easily over painted.

Of course, most of us have not lived in a world of unconditional love, even in the church. We Methodists are traditionally called to go “onto perfection in love of God and neighbor until our hearts are so full of love, nothing else exists.” Judgement causes fear, so people are afraid to give what they have or to serve with their gifts, if others tell them how poorly they are doing.

In art class, we have a rule of positive critiques. First we find three constructive statements to make about a student’s work. Then we talk about what can be improved. It takes time to move people’s minds from thinking negatively about their own work, to believing positively in their capabilities to learn. In this aspect, I confess to a belief in “works righteousness,” for persistence will pay off. While we may not become Matisse or Michelangelo, we can enjoy the pleasures of color and the creative act of making art in our own way.

We had a full class last Friday when I brought a small still life. The objects were a small clay lamp from the Holy Land, a white stone scraper I found on an arrowhead hunt with my family, my grandmother’s darning egg, a stone fossil from my San Antonio neighborhood, and a leaf I picked up in the parking lot. Artists can make anything interesting, for we don’t need to have luxurious items for our subjects. Each person brought elements of their own personality to the subject at hand.

Mike is one of my repeat students, who loves texture and mixing colors. You can see he favored the lamp, the scraper, and the fossil, for these have these best rendering. The rest are suggested just enough to balance the others.

Erma is new to the class and comes from a mosaic background. Her shapes are true and carefully drawn. Working to get the dimensional qualities is a challenge for everyone. This comes from learning to see the light and darks. Last year the class had traditional perspective drawing classes. I may have to do this again for this group, now that I see where they are.

Tatiana has a fine drawing of the leaf and the fossil. Her colors are natural. Getting shapes down is the first goal. Later we’ll work on highlights and shadows.

I was glad to see Glenn back after his health issue. Can’t keep a good man down. He was in good humor the whole class and was a blessing to all of us. He got the basic shapes of the still life on the canvas. Next time, we’ll work on filling more of the canvas, so it won’t feel so lonely.

Gail is on her second year of art classes. She’s either a glutton for punishment or she’s getting some pleasure from them. She is an example of persistence leading to improvement. Her objects are to scale, relative to each other. We see highlights from the light source, as well as the cast shadows, both of which emphasize the sense of solidity of the objects represented. She has marked off a front plane from the blue background.

Some say artists never use logic, or the left side of their brains, but I’d disagree with this. Back in the 1970’s, the commonly held theory was creativity’s location was in the right side of the brain, but today neuroscientists believe both logic and creativity use both sides of the brain at once. While speech and sight are located in certain areas, which if damaged, can affect these abilities, logic and creativity are spread out across many areas of the brain, says Dr. Kara D. Federmeier, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she’s also affiliated with the Neurosciences Program and The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

As we age, older adults tend to learn better how to be both logical AND creative. This may occur because this kind of a shift is helpful to bring extra processing resources to bear on a task to compensate for age-related declines in function. Or it might be a sign that the brain is simply less good at maintaining its youthful division of labor. Understanding hemispheric specialization is thus also important for discovering ways to help us all maintain better cognitive functioning with age.

Those folks who say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” haven’t been to an art class. We don’t teach, we give opportunities to learn. Every day in my own studio, I learn something new about myself, the paint, my world, my calling, and my vision for the future. I never reach perfection, but at least I’m going on to perfection. My little still life has a mosaic quality, because I took an old canvas, which didn’t meet my expectations, and I sliced it up into evenly spaced vertical cuts. I took another poorly done old work, cut it up into horizontal strips and wove it into the first canvas. Then I painted over what was underneath. Yes, I had to pile the paint on thickly, but that gives it a rich effect, as opposed to a thinned out, watercolor feeling. While I made no clear line of demarcation, the color change denotes the difference between the table and the background.

I do not know what tomorrow will will bring, or what will come to life on the blank canvas before me. If we will trust the one who lived, died, and rose for us, we can live and work in perfect love every moment of our whole lives. I know I trust the word of our Lord who always will be there for us in our futures to make our mountains into molehills.

“But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”
~~ Mark 14:28

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/12/02/248089436/the-truth-about-the-left-brain-right-brain-relationship

Time and Art March Along

adult learning, art, Creativity, Faith, Health, Ministry, Painting, purpose, renewal, Spirituality, vision

Time and the tide waits for no one, we’re certain of this, for we can no more wrestle the waters of the sea to keep the waves from their constant flowing in and out than we can stop the minutes and seconds from slipping into the past, where they’ll be only a memory for a while.

As a mother, I endured the pains of childbirth for excruciating moments, but when I held my beloved daughter in my arms, I immediately began to replace those difficult memories with the present joys of her new life and my new hopes for our life to come. I learned how quickly a newborn child could grow, for she hardly had a chance to wear those cute 3 month old clothes before she outgrew them. When she was six, I bought her lace Sox and white patent leather shoes two weeks before her baptism, but she out grew them and walked to the font barefooted to receive the sacramental water.

I was appalled, but children’s feet don’t pay attention to parent’s pocketbooks or church calendars. Besides, God called her to holy ground, so her feet needed to be bared. The rest of us were just doing church. Time and tide, as well as the Holy Spirit, can’t be controlled by any human means. We have to ask, what does this have to do with art?

Samuel Johnson, the English author said, “The true art of memory is the art of attention.” To what do we pay attention?

1. To the various lists of chores we need to do before we can do something for our own joy or spiritual health?

2. To our list of fears and anxieties about what others will think of our choice to do an activity?

3. To our feelings of inadequacy if we don’t achieve instant success?

I could name others, but in truth, the true art of memory, which is the art of attention, is being present to oneself and to the present moment. We aren’t asked to be in the future or the past, but in the now. This isn’t as easy as it seems, but it’s extremely rewarding. When an artist “gets into this zone of the present moment,” all cares fall away, thinking about pains and problems ceases, and only the creative process and the creation becomes important. In a sense, the artist enters into the life of the creating God. How is this so? God is I AM, or the one who is I AM BECOMING. God is also I WILL BE, for God’s name is all of the “being and becoming” verbs at once.

I began formal art lessons at age 8 years old, but not everyone has that opportunity. Grandma Moses began painting at 78 years of age. Some people paint for fame or to try to earn a living. That was my goal before God called me to the ministry. Now I see my art as the opportunity for others to grow closer to God as a form of meditation. It’s also a good way to challenge the brain, since learning new things helps to keep the mind sharp. Adults need this, along with exercise, a healthy lifestyle, and companionship.

Over the last year, two students have persisted. Both have improved their drawing skills, they are better able to make self directed choices, they are better problem solvers, they see better, and their painting skills are improving. Moreover, while they say “I really don’t have time for this, but if I don’t do it, I get overwhelmed by too many other things. Art class helps me clear out a space for myself.”

In a sense, painting is like prayer. If we don’t have time for prayer, we can find our lives cycling out of control. We are ships on tides we can’t control and live from day to day, watching the leaves of our calendars fly past us, never to return again. Some of us may like living in chaos, since it gives us the feeling of being alive. Others choose to live in chaos because then they don’t have to deal with their feelings, but can spend their time putting out the fires. If we stop for prayer, or stop to paint, these feelings will come to the surface. At least in prayer or in art class, we’re in a place where God is close at hand. As the scriptures promise,

“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” (Psalms 145:18)

Homage to Morandi

adult learning, art, Children, Creativity, Faith, Love, Ministry, nature, Painting, shadows, Spirituality, trees, United Methodist Church, vision

My students in the art class at the church have shown much progress since we began last year. I’m proud of them for sticking in there and taking this journey down a path less traveled by others. Most art education classes begin with the idea of a model and the students should all try to match it. This is typical of “right answers” in most schoolwork, such as math. Indeed, 2 plus 2 should equal 4, and not 3 or 5. We can’t get creative in our answers in math class, but we can have room for creativity in art class. If we have a still life to render on a page, we should have something that’s recognizable as the objects, but Cubism has taught us the objects don’t have to be painted as Realism. We can paint them different, emotional colors, as in Fauvism, or in a monochromatic scheme, like Georgio Morandi.

Another growth area we have is continuing to observe the subject while we draw and paint. Children draw the idea or symbol of the thing they’re representing. If we’re attempting to render a realistic subject, we need to constantly check back to the objects to notice the negative spaces and the shadows, as well as the forms themselves. This is a matter of discipline, which all artists have to undergo. I spent many an hour in art school drawing models without ever being able to look at my work—this is how you train your brain to connect to your hand. The first efforts are pretty goofy looking, for sure. You have to leave your ego at the door if you want to become an artist.

All beginning artists try to make a shape perfect first and then color it in, much like filling in the black lines of a coloring book. This year we’re working on losing our need to be perfect from the start, and begin to paint from the first. This lets us have more emotion and feeling in our work. We do this by drawing with a brush and a light, yellow wash on the canvas. We can easily paint over it with our thicker paints. If we don’t get it right, we can scribble over it, or use a pale pink wash to make a different line.

About the age of nine, children begin to draw what they see, but still have no real sense of perspective or scale. The most important object is the largest. About the time they become teenagers, they show an interest in realism and the artistic skills needed to produce these tricks of the eye. More precocious children will begin earlier, and others may never show an interest at all. Some naive painters will retain childish forms, but have strong pattern and design elements, such as Grandma Moses, who painted the memories of her childhood.

Last year I started the class on basic perspective. It might have been too difficult for some, or too uninteresting for others. Yet basic perspective is a building block lesson for any art lesson that is more than decorating a flat surface with pretty colors. Likewise, making a shadow study of basic geometric forms is important because all objects in nature can be reduced to a geometric form: tree trunks are cylinders, fir trees are cones, oak trees are spheres, houses and churches are rectangular solids and pyramids, and bridges are rectangular solids supported by piers, which are more of the same. A complex landscape becomes easier to sketch out in block shapes if the artist can identify the basic components of what he or she sees.

People think art is “Just something I can do when I feel like I’ve got nothing else to do.” This is the description for finger painting for kindergarteners, if you think about it. Art is for both thinking and feeling, since both the brain and the heart need to be active at the same time. Some say only the heart needs to be active, but the head is exercising choices and making decisions to limit the red or to add more yellow or to rip a huge black down the side of the canvas. Only the artists who are unintegrated will contend they work only from the mind or from the heart. We actually work with both, even if one is diminished in nature.

If the great commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” means anything in the art life, it’s we aren’t meant to separate any one part of our experience from any other part. In our art expressions, as in our faith expressions, our heart, soul, and mind needs to be fixed on love of God, as well as love of neighbor, for loving our neighbor, in whatever form, fashion, or fix our neighbors find themselves in, is the same as loving the image of God in which they were also made. By loving our neighbors, we love ourselves also. If we hate our neighbors, we hate ourselves. God didn’t mean for us to hate God’s image.

These are the wonderful spiritual truths we learn in art class. It’s more than learning how to mix colors or draw a box in perspective. These are art skills. Life skills are way more important. Take a look at the work from last year and this year. You can still join this class. You aren’t competing with anyone, but you will be working to improve over time. Going onto perfection takes time. Now is a good time to begin!

THE PARK MAY BE CLOSED BUT THE CITY ISN’T

at risk kids, Creativity, Food, generosity, Imagination, Meditation, photography, poverty, Travel, Uncategorized, vision, Work

I took the back way home. Even though I was using the GPS, I deviated from her well intentioned directions. Perhaps I was just intent on exploring, or perhaps I had “authority issues” I needed to work out on leadership, since no one in our country’s Capitol seemed to care for the the poor and the weak any more. “It doesn’t affect me, so why should I worry? Most people won’t notice anything amiss in their daily lives.” How easily we discount “the other.” We think so often only of ourselves: of me, myself, and my. My exploration, as I call the GPS recalculating mode, led me to an island of peace in the heart of the industrial zone of Hot Springs National Park.

Because of the current government shutdown, the park spa, museum, and natural spaces are shut down. We can still walk up to the fountains of the ever flowing springs and fill our water bottles for free, but hiking the trails are forbidden until the money flows from DC. The City of Hot Springs National Park belongs to the state of Arkansas, so it was Wednesday as usual. Our schools had lunch and adults went to work (unless they were federal employees or national guardsmen).

I ended my exploration at Sanders Plumbing Supply. There I found an old wooden railroad trestle bridge crossing both the road and the creek that runs beside it. I parked in the business lot, took my iPhone and crossed the street. The slope down into the creek was gentle and dry, for we haven’t had much rain in these parts. As I clambered into the shallow stream, I walked on an extruded basalt flow. That this old volcanic rock had coursed across the earth in an ancient time and still persisted reminded me that life is more than just today. Even the years of water had not worn it down. I made a short instamatic video of the rippling water, the waving weeds, and the sunlight touching the water. I was finding my peace again.

These black basalt beds were big enough to stretch out on, so I took advantage of this position. Folks in Arkansas aren’t much used to seeing a gray haired lady dressed in bright yellow and red lying in the middle of a creek bed and taking photos. I got a lot of friendly honks & waves from the passing cars. Then again, a person of any age doing something out of the ordinary is apt to get encouragement from the folks who aren’t quite up to stepping out of the safe path themselves.

When I came home, I made this little drawing in a Strathmore watercolor sketchbook. It’s no bigger than an iPad mini. I used an ordinary ink pen, the same tool with which I journal on most days. To focus on the antiquity of the natural elements and the constancy of God’s divine providence for God’s creation reminded me that this day’s problems are being handled by a higher power. As I drew the old railroad trestle bridge, I realized that “this train is bound for glory” (Woody Guthry). We may not see the train right now, but it won’t carry the self-righteous anymore than the hustlers or the sinners. It will carry the humble, the ones who put their trust in God, and care for all of God’s people, not just for the ones who can return the favor.

“For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).

Artandicon's Blog

Crossroads of art and faith

drawing

The Hand Rewrites the Brain

Inspired by Autumn Leaves

Texture Paintings

Welcome to My World

Mountains and Molehills

Time and Art March Along

Homage to Morandi

THE PARK MAY BE CLOSED BUT THE CITY ISN’T

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