The energy Art beams into our souls is none other than the archetypal force of Hercules that breaks the chains of our inner Prometheus, liberates us from the rock of materialism
So well written, Clint. I would merely add my own perspective, informed by Advaita Vedantic teaching, that when we resonate with art, like paintings or music, we are recognizing our own true natures. We are beauty, ourselves, at the deepest level. When we encounter beauty, we recognize something. Eckhart Tolle teaches to regard a moment when the first human encountered a flower, and smiled. What was that, what happened in that moment? The flower has no utility, and utility was critically important during this moment, and yet the beauty brought a smile. I subscribe to this perspective, and like so many things one must hold antagonistic concepts simultaneously, such as art for selling, and art for beauty, or art for healing, or any art for utility vs any fine art, whose definition includes the word 'beauty'. Both are valid, but from different perspectives. www.robertsesco.com
What an amazing article! It gives me much needed motivation to keep pursuing my dream which is irrational and “useless” 😊. Thanks for writing and sharing it. Here is my website: https://seasilencestudio.pixels.com
Beautiful and thoughtfully written Clint. Thank you for providing such inspiration through the art of words. I also enjoyed the amazing violinist, made my day.
Thank you, Clintavo, for rising up and fighting for us ‘little guys!’ One of the many reasons I use FASO for my website! www.littlehopkinsstudiogallery.com
Hello Clintavo, I’ve read your work somewhere else, not sure where that was. I deeply appreciate and agree with every word you’ve written here, and it is very similar to my work, but just has a small difference in the source/context area just based in my framing, but exactly the same in spirit. And I was very encouraged to see artists in the comments saying they were deeply encouraged by this, which is one of my great hopes, to encourage artists. Though I’m no longer religious, that is how I got here, and I used to have a few congregations of artists in Manhattan as a pastor, and a former vocational artist who decided to end the vocational aspect of my art and instead seek to encourage artists in their work and life within the culture of religion I was swimming in at the time…not Christian art by any means, I fucking hate Christian art, and it was also a non-interest of all the artists I was with in Manhattan who also happened to be Christians. And as you say here, “Therefore, to be Art, an artistic creation cannot be a means to anything other than itself, which is synonymous with the divine”. Which is why “Christian art” is so bad, the word you don’t say is propaganda, which is art for another purpose rather than itself. Propaganda by definition will always be bad, it has to be bad, it has been soured at its root. But that’s not why I comment here today.
I love the phrase about the energy that beams out of art, I use the same phrase. It is amazing, a painting is just sitting there, a book might be on a shelf for years until it is opened, when someone steps in front of the painting it beams something into them, and they are expanded by it…something was added to them making them more than they were before. I don’t think any of us will ever know for a long time what that is, but we do know it is an energy since everything happens via energy in this universe. Brain neurons have to fire for the eye to see the art then other neurons fire for some experience and then reaction to the art, all that is energy. Light had to fall upon the colors and shapes of the art and be bounced into the eye, sound waves had to be produced by the music and converted by the ear into mechanical energy (the three little bones), then hydraulic energy (liquid in the cochlea) and eventually electrical nerve energy in the cochlea transmitted into the brain to fire neurons. But all that observation of energy through the science we have acquired still doesn’t answer why this happens. Why do those colors, shapes and sounds that are ingested so affect the person? No one knows why, but people like you and me try to make some sense of it. What I’ve come to think about it, which I feel is a sort of discovery, is that it is within the same mysterious area as the energy we experience when we look into someone’s eyes that we care for, and you also reflect that.
I take it another direction because it happens to fit quite nicely into the whole social theory I’ve written about how human society is structured by energy flows that we create and I consider it to be one of the four categories I’ve created. I say Art is one of four of the structural ways humanity organizes itself with a deep inner motivation that keeps it all going. I explain it by saying Art is how humans who don’t know one another communicate in a deep human way to each other. You stare at the painting and you don’t know the artist, maybe thousands or millions have also stared at the painting and you all don’t know each other but have conversations in media about the painting. Same with music. You go to a concert and you don’t know the artist on the stage nor the audience also swaying alongside you. But because of that Art you all join into a communal experience. You all go home and never see each other again but you’ve been connected to strangers in a way that is as deep as any other human connection we experience.
In this way, human society has a means to build deep connections between us all. All culture is largely based on art, the cuisine, the music, the textiles of a people are their culture which is Art. We don’t go to France to study their tax system or highway engineering, we go for their culture/art. And when we do that, we are connected in a deep human way to the whole of the French people. Now we really don’t want to bomb them. If more Americans had holidayed in Afghanistan or Iraq, probably those wars wouldn’t have happened. If French terror groups had flown the planes into the twin towers on 9/11 we wouldn’t have attacked all of France. But Iraq and Afghanistan are still too foreign to us, we aren’t connected to their art or their people, so it was easier for us to caricaturize them into non-human baddies worthy of attack. In that situation we hadn’t been able to enjoy the benefits that art brings to human society. It hadn’t yet seeped in with those two far away places.
Thank you for your wonderful words, I wanted to show how my similar thoughts also go off into other meaningful directions. In both cases it shows how important Art is and therefore artists, because whatever that mysterious energy is, it is artists that put it into their work. It is their humanness somehow placed like ROM into the medium that is then triggered to beam out when engaged with by another human.
Different angle for sure. But, he talks about the “spirit of the gift” or something like that, so it’s not too far a stretch from the idea of energy flows. In his mind, the goal of the gift economy is to keep the energy flows circulating and increasing within the community. So a gift economy WITHIN the community (usually small) and a market economy when dealing with outsiders (because if you sell something to an outsider, you’ve allowed energy to leave the community). You might gift grain to a neighbor knowing the harvest will increase the bounty of all, including you, but you’d want to SELL it, with some kind of upcharge to a stranger becomes not only does the grain leave the community but the entire community also leaves the increase it would bring.
Yeah I have thought about the difference between our work as gift or market sale, but I never came up with anything, or tried too hard, so I’ll have to read that and try to ingest it. And you’re right either way it is an energy flow.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I delayed responding until I could sit down and truly read it. You have touched upon a lot of great points here and I sense, as you said, that we are of kindred thoughts about this.
Yes, I agree that propaganda is terrible, it is kitsch. It's nearly impossible to go into an area like "Christian art" and let the divine mystery truly flow. I'm sure there are some who do it, but most people take too literal of an approach I think. If someone wants to evoke God in their art, then let the direct experience of God lead the art itself! Otherwise you've just turned yourself into a bible translator's illustrator. I need to write about propaganda further at some point.
You mention your social theory and the four structural ways humanity organizes itself around energy flows. Would you mind sharing the other three? Do you have a book about this? Are these topics what you cover on your substack?
You bring up a great point about the experience of Art building community. Have you ever read a book called "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde? He explores the difference between a gift economy and a market economy. And gives lots of examples of traditional and tribal notions of the community and how they bring themselves together via gifts and the energy of gifts and the notion that all the property is community owned (and how market economies have destroyed much of that while at the same time bringing other benefits and problems). I'm reading it now but what you describe about people being connected in some way by the experience and the energy of art feels related to the gift economy idea that brings people together. I would consider art a gift (and I think he covers this in the second half of the book) so the way it brings us together may be related to some of his ideas. The talent is a gift from God, the art is a gift to the viewers, and as viewers our responsibility it to keep the gift moving, to pay it forward. I'm just rambling now. I feel like there's a connection I just can't quite solidify in my mind.
The market economy separates us, and art/culture brings us together, agreed. It would be nice, if a dream at this point, if we could start trying to build bridges to one another instead of walls. Unfortunately, for the most part, the kind of people who become world leaders are not the kind of people who think like you and me.
Thanks for the inspiration today. Reminds me of a discussion I had this week with other artists about my hating commissions because the clients’ wishes get into my head and interfere with satisfying my own standards.
Getting excited about visiting Andalusia in 2 weeks. On our last day, I'll visit "Guernica" in Madrid. My goal is to get inspired to paint resistance paintings, hoping that others who will do the same will join for an exhibit sometime in 2026 in recognition of our responsibility as artists to speak truth to fascism.
So well written, Clint. I would merely add my own perspective, informed by Advaita Vedantic teaching, that when we resonate with art, like paintings or music, we are recognizing our own true natures. We are beauty, ourselves, at the deepest level. When we encounter beauty, we recognize something. Eckhart Tolle teaches to regard a moment when the first human encountered a flower, and smiled. What was that, what happened in that moment? The flower has no utility, and utility was critically important during this moment, and yet the beauty brought a smile. I subscribe to this perspective, and like so many things one must hold antagonistic concepts simultaneously, such as art for selling, and art for beauty, or art for healing, or any art for utility vs any fine art, whose definition includes the word 'beauty'. Both are valid, but from different perspectives. www.robertsesco.com
Thank you for sharing this illuminating perspective!
What an amazing article! It gives me much needed motivation to keep pursuing my dream which is irrational and “useless” 😊. Thanks for writing and sharing it. Here is my website: https://seasilencestudio.pixels.com
You're welcome. Thank you so much for your comment, I'm glad it maybe inspired a little bit.
Beautiful and thoughtfully written Clint. Thank you for providing such inspiration through the art of words. I also enjoyed the amazing violinist, made my day.
www.lindaschroeter.com
Thank you, Clintavo, for rising up and fighting for us ‘little guys!’ One of the many reasons I use FASO for my website! www.littlehopkinsstudiogallery.com
Thank you for supporting us!
I would love to contribute, www.Irenebeekain.com
Clintavo, Thank you. If humans lost their creative urge, all would be lost. Please check out www.lilpuj.com, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Agreed!
Hello Clintavo, I’ve read your work somewhere else, not sure where that was. I deeply appreciate and agree with every word you’ve written here, and it is very similar to my work, but just has a small difference in the source/context area just based in my framing, but exactly the same in spirit. And I was very encouraged to see artists in the comments saying they were deeply encouraged by this, which is one of my great hopes, to encourage artists. Though I’m no longer religious, that is how I got here, and I used to have a few congregations of artists in Manhattan as a pastor, and a former vocational artist who decided to end the vocational aspect of my art and instead seek to encourage artists in their work and life within the culture of religion I was swimming in at the time…not Christian art by any means, I fucking hate Christian art, and it was also a non-interest of all the artists I was with in Manhattan who also happened to be Christians. And as you say here, “Therefore, to be Art, an artistic creation cannot be a means to anything other than itself, which is synonymous with the divine”. Which is why “Christian art” is so bad, the word you don’t say is propaganda, which is art for another purpose rather than itself. Propaganda by definition will always be bad, it has to be bad, it has been soured at its root. But that’s not why I comment here today.
I love the phrase about the energy that beams out of art, I use the same phrase. It is amazing, a painting is just sitting there, a book might be on a shelf for years until it is opened, when someone steps in front of the painting it beams something into them, and they are expanded by it…something was added to them making them more than they were before. I don’t think any of us will ever know for a long time what that is, but we do know it is an energy since everything happens via energy in this universe. Brain neurons have to fire for the eye to see the art then other neurons fire for some experience and then reaction to the art, all that is energy. Light had to fall upon the colors and shapes of the art and be bounced into the eye, sound waves had to be produced by the music and converted by the ear into mechanical energy (the three little bones), then hydraulic energy (liquid in the cochlea) and eventually electrical nerve energy in the cochlea transmitted into the brain to fire neurons. But all that observation of energy through the science we have acquired still doesn’t answer why this happens. Why do those colors, shapes and sounds that are ingested so affect the person? No one knows why, but people like you and me try to make some sense of it. What I’ve come to think about it, which I feel is a sort of discovery, is that it is within the same mysterious area as the energy we experience when we look into someone’s eyes that we care for, and you also reflect that.
I take it another direction because it happens to fit quite nicely into the whole social theory I’ve written about how human society is structured by energy flows that we create and I consider it to be one of the four categories I’ve created. I say Art is one of four of the structural ways humanity organizes itself with a deep inner motivation that keeps it all going. I explain it by saying Art is how humans who don’t know one another communicate in a deep human way to each other. You stare at the painting and you don’t know the artist, maybe thousands or millions have also stared at the painting and you all don’t know each other but have conversations in media about the painting. Same with music. You go to a concert and you don’t know the artist on the stage nor the audience also swaying alongside you. But because of that Art you all join into a communal experience. You all go home and never see each other again but you’ve been connected to strangers in a way that is as deep as any other human connection we experience.
In this way, human society has a means to build deep connections between us all. All culture is largely based on art, the cuisine, the music, the textiles of a people are their culture which is Art. We don’t go to France to study their tax system or highway engineering, we go for their culture/art. And when we do that, we are connected in a deep human way to the whole of the French people. Now we really don’t want to bomb them. If more Americans had holidayed in Afghanistan or Iraq, probably those wars wouldn’t have happened. If French terror groups had flown the planes into the twin towers on 9/11 we wouldn’t have attacked all of France. But Iraq and Afghanistan are still too foreign to us, we aren’t connected to their art or their people, so it was easier for us to caricaturize them into non-human baddies worthy of attack. In that situation we hadn’t been able to enjoy the benefits that art brings to human society. It hadn’t yet seeped in with those two far away places.
Thank you for your wonderful words, I wanted to show how my similar thoughts also go off into other meaningful directions. In both cases it shows how important Art is and therefore artists, because whatever that mysterious energy is, it is artists that put it into their work. It is their humanness somehow placed like ROM into the medium that is then triggered to beam out when engaged with by another human.
Interesting. He’s coming at it from a different angle.
Here’s my Substack book, you have to get to the end of chapter one…only 28 minutes.
https://thestructureoflove.substack.com/p/chapter-1-the-hidden-structure-of
Different angle for sure. But, he talks about the “spirit of the gift” or something like that, so it’s not too far a stretch from the idea of energy flows. In his mind, the goal of the gift economy is to keep the energy flows circulating and increasing within the community. So a gift economy WITHIN the community (usually small) and a market economy when dealing with outsiders (because if you sell something to an outsider, you’ve allowed energy to leave the community). You might gift grain to a neighbor knowing the harvest will increase the bounty of all, including you, but you’d want to SELL it, with some kind of upcharge to a stranger becomes not only does the grain leave the community but the entire community also leaves the increase it would bring.
Yeah I have thought about the difference between our work as gift or market sale, but I never came up with anything, or tried too hard, so I’ll have to read that and try to ingest it. And you’re right either way it is an energy flow.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I delayed responding until I could sit down and truly read it. You have touched upon a lot of great points here and I sense, as you said, that we are of kindred thoughts about this.
Yes, I agree that propaganda is terrible, it is kitsch. It's nearly impossible to go into an area like "Christian art" and let the divine mystery truly flow. I'm sure there are some who do it, but most people take too literal of an approach I think. If someone wants to evoke God in their art, then let the direct experience of God lead the art itself! Otherwise you've just turned yourself into a bible translator's illustrator. I need to write about propaganda further at some point.
You mention your social theory and the four structural ways humanity organizes itself around energy flows. Would you mind sharing the other three? Do you have a book about this? Are these topics what you cover on your substack?
You bring up a great point about the experience of Art building community. Have you ever read a book called "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde? He explores the difference between a gift economy and a market economy. And gives lots of examples of traditional and tribal notions of the community and how they bring themselves together via gifts and the energy of gifts and the notion that all the property is community owned (and how market economies have destroyed much of that while at the same time bringing other benefits and problems). I'm reading it now but what you describe about people being connected in some way by the experience and the energy of art feels related to the gift economy idea that brings people together. I would consider art a gift (and I think he covers this in the second half of the book) so the way it brings us together may be related to some of his ideas. The talent is a gift from God, the art is a gift to the viewers, and as viewers our responsibility it to keep the gift moving, to pay it forward. I'm just rambling now. I feel like there's a connection I just can't quite solidify in my mind.
The market economy separates us, and art/culture brings us together, agreed. It would be nice, if a dream at this point, if we could start trying to build bridges to one another instead of walls. Unfortunately, for the most part, the kind of people who become world leaders are not the kind of people who think like you and me.
Thanks for the inspiration today. Reminds me of a discussion I had this week with other artists about my hating commissions because the clients’ wishes get into my head and interfere with satisfying my own standards.
I would be happy to contribute my art. https://www.instagram.com/anthonyfredaart/
Getting excited about visiting Andalusia in 2 weeks. On our last day, I'll visit "Guernica" in Madrid. My goal is to get inspired to paint resistance paintings, hoping that others who will do the same will join for an exhibit sometime in 2026 in recognition of our responsibility as artists to speak truth to fascism.