Art suffuses life

Many of us think that the ability to detect or appreciate art is exclusive to those with substantial training in the field or those with a specially keen sense for it. This notion, thus, suggests that anyone who can appreciate art may also have the capacity to create it. Which is probably so in the sense that one's mastery of something often equips him both an ample understanding of it and the skill to produce it.

But this may be a highly technical concept of art. A more practical interpretation of art might be that it is something that shakes or affect our senses in any way. In this view then art becomes something that suffuses life.

In "Art in Daily Life," R. W. Machell wrote: "We are not specially interested in the life of an artist unless we ourselves are artists, but we all live lives in which art plays a part, and alas in most lives a very small part, so small indeed, that to most people it is considered as something quite unnecessary and wholly ornamental; but I think that an artist, who is a true artist, is one who has specialized in his life some faculty that is present in the lives of all men, or would be present if they were living true lives, which few can do today."

In the light of the special regard we give artists today, many people try so hard to create art but can hardly be called artists. And yet others simply "try to live as butterflies, without effort, trusting to their genius to do their work and to spare them all need of effort," according to Machell, who also cited a great artist who took a butterfly as his emblem. The artist, Machell writes, has said, "Industry in art is not a virtue; it is a necessity."

It can be said, therefore, that it does not only take talent and training to create art - it takes consistent effort, too. Innate talent is like a seed, it has to be nurtured by proper training to make it flourish. And it takes constant nurturing still to make it yield beautiful results.

This is true, as well, with the rest of us, who for lack either of special talent or of training, are content only with appreciating the art that others create or sensing the art in the life around us. At the most fundamental level, the ability to recognize art has much to do with one's degree of raw sensitivity.

And sensitivity can be cultivated, too. To make the effort to see a sense of order in chaos, for example, can lead to an understanding of why the people we abhor are what they are to us. At times is takes only an open mind to consider how every life form we encounter - from the tiniest insect to a dearest friend - perceives the world on its own. At other times, we are prompted to think of a superior force that makes and puts things exactly what and where they are.

In a practical sense, even mere curiosity is an art form necessary to move us to discover more. The art of loving lends meaning to our day-to-day existence. The art of nourishing ourselves often unfolds at the cue of hunger. Even fear itself is art, for it usually makes us more careful about ourselves. 

There are various other arts than what we see on canvas, in the frame, or what we hear in the air. In fact, art is the very essence of life. One has to imbibe it in order to be truly alive.