Jounrney towards understanding and ARTiculating the Depths of our Emotions

Learning any skill out there is a transformative journey - one that turns our erroneous, socially conditioned preconceptions inside-out. music, art, literature, creative writing - these are all means of helping one elicit their inner selves and shedding light on one's character. In the course of mastering any skill, one gets closer to themselves. The journey of learning is way more delightful than the state of mastery. It is along this journey that we face our imperfections, our insignificance, our fears to be ourselves and deeply rooted conformity to social norms. That which is absolutely complete or perfect is dead. For without the possibility of growth, there is no life. Would learning the new skill cause frustration and/or despair especially for people with high expectations of themselves? Not if the appropriate attitude foundation is laid. Not if we 'trick' the mind into apprehending the usefulness of such an 'exercise.' We need to convince the mind that as novice we cannot fall victims to the 'high demands and high expectations' syndrome. 

The self-transformative journey begins by turning off the mind and gaining a focus. First, we sketch our life up to this moment - a straight, conformative path, comfortable walk with no risk of being questioned, critiqued, judged, brought back to life. 

Then, slowly art helps us break away from the routine. It gradually shifts our perspective and adjusts our perceptions - turns up our awareness, turns down our fears. We naturally crave distractions - myriad of sights, sounds, and thrills - because of our fear of quieting down our thoughts and getting intimate with our real selves. Art teaches us to see and feel between the lines. For art is all about being present, being in touch with our senses, seeing rather than looking, feeling rather than thinking. Understanding, let alone producing art, happens only when we know how to see and experience things in their entirety. Therefore, the prerequisite for learning how to draw is learning how to feel and how to see. Luckily, seeing is a skill we can practice at all times. It just requires from us to arm ourselves with patience, open mind, and curiosity. To exercise this skill we can use ''ordinary'' objects found in our surroundings. Whatever it is, we need to spend some time with the object until we find its meaning - a stamp not only speaks about its time and place, it also reveals the thoughts of the one who designed it. Take a moment in your daily life to use your eyes to reveal the essence or history behind any mundane object. Let's just assume that the more common the object, the richer the meaning, greater the splendor of its story. Our task is to find the pleasure in attending and looking at things. Then, the pleasure of discovering new things will naturally unfold. Second, we need to re-attain the feeling of wonder at the world around us which is another way for entering the space of the child.

Start off by looking at something as ordinary as sugar. How much history is packaged in a spoonful of sugar? White or brown (or red as it is considered and labelled in Indonesia), sugar as we see it ready to consume takes a long journey before it reaches our food or drink. [TO BE CONTINUED...]

Then, art shows us how simple life is. It manifests itself in lines and circles. Even the most complicated figure out there is the sum total and a beautifully composed choreography of a multitude of straight lines mixed with circles or ellipses. At this stage, you learn how to decompose and see things in terms of these three shapes. Circle, line, line, circle. Ellipse, circle, line, line. Life is simple. Art is simple. Our mind complicates it all. There are so many filters we use to complicate the world around us - social, political, personal, and so forth. 

The simple compilation of a few circles and a few lines makes up the new landfill of our old preconceptions, prejudices, fears, and comfort zones. We draw the 'shelter', drawn the biases in it and move forward.

Learning to draw starts with copying objects that exist in the real world. To master the skill, we need to polish our ability to see and reflect on reality. Only when we lay this stable foundation, can we move towards producing an abstract work of art. Likewise with imagination. Before we assist children in further developing their imagination, we need to let them build a stable reality support. 

It is an incredible feeling of delightful wonder to learn a new skill through the use of foreign symbols. In this manner, we simultaneously explore our own self and marvel at the mystery of another culture's artifacts. By mindful and concentrated looking we spend time observing and visually interrogating the essence of these symbols. We come to understand subtleties about the art products of that particular culture and question how the social and cultural environment has shaped their creation.

Yet, there come moments in our lives when the tools we have been utilizing become irrelevant. We need to unlearn of all notions of art and become flexible in our methods. Once our best friends, the lines and circles could lose their significance and we need to find our way out; we need to learn to trust our intuition and inner artist.