'Canopy' one of the funs in doing still lifes is the opportunity to play with a few oddball notions - such as the query of what is or is not seen within or without, as presented here..... the themetitle is an obvious one, yet just what is canopied remains the query- IS this an empty bottle, from which is seen a shore view, ir is it all within the bottle, cleverly arranged on the ledge so as to be presumed a part of the background... as another of the whimsical pieces of long ago (and, sadly, destroyed in a fire), there was always a delight in how the bottle so well played against the rest of the piece, and at the same time raise some strong philosophical intimations..... yes - that is right, philosophical intimations..... why? because of the determination of it being a work of visual art - remember, there is a universe within the borders of this, so it behoves asking the pertinant questions regarding just what kind of universe is seen here, including the oft overlooked one of just where 'man' is in here and what is the place of 'man' in here, what is the relationship in here of the presence, is it positive or negative, deliberate or happenstance, future oriented or past, productive or otherwise, or is there any real significance to it at all - and why or why not..... there is even reason to ask if it would have been improve by colorful fruits being incorporated into the work - perhaps at least orangeness if not reds here and there - AND of what significance metaphorically any of this would have, assuming there would even be any significance....

'propagation' Turning away for the moment from figures, here is an other example of still life, one using a living creature as an inquiry point......... there are, of course, many layers on the meaning being used in the theme/title - from the obvious one of the spouting coconut, juxapost on the once living wood table - to the query of the non-living churn and glass... notice, tho, the lack of decay in the rendering - a paeon to the living as being important, as well as the practical as being an application of the living... then there is the mouse - the 'inquiry agent' as it were, seemingly critiquing the whole of the composition... at this point, there is the shading, but with a light shadow - which will in time be darkened, as it'll improve the 'grounding' of the rendering [ nothing worse than visualizing a 'floating abstraction']......note, tho, that there is a continuation between the spouting coconut and the churn and the glass - all within the theme/titling.....

'Stoned Face' once again have turned to the issue of humor in art.......as can be noticed, this is a multiple play on words, with the whole/hole the most obvious, as well as in turn several meanings of the respective words.. as to how this one came about, the original notion involved using a keyhole, from within to view the scene - but, of course, the keyhole is WAY too small for such...so thought of a giant's keyhole - but that was too fantasy-ful....so thought of a peephole, with highly decorated wrought iron...... but thought that too boring, even with the decoration.... so - why not a stone giant's head, mouth open, suggestive in itself of several meanings... the 'magic mirror' so to speak, of fairyland..... the leer being the 'base' attitude expected of such a being, even as the humorousness of the face showing the laughing, as it were, of the leering notion itself... as is also noted, this is another in the split black/white-color that was seen in 'the garden' for instance......

'First the Sand...' one of the joys in rendering is to take an old idea and give it a bit of twist...theoriginal was a staid one of a child playing with building blocks, but quickly graduated to being on a beach, where crashing waves could be rendered - and a distant scene of the possible future... another sort of 'progression' as it were... but thought that having the person as an adult exploring new paths might make it more interesting - especially as adding a naked woman increases the beauty aspect of the work, elevating the metaphysical of the universe within... had thought of doing more to the circle above, as perhaps turning it into an explicit world of some kind, extending the 'progression' idea into a distance of space as well as the future - but thought that the skyscraper did that implicating well enough on its own, leaving the world to be whatever one's imaginatiuon dared to proclaim...

'The Sighting' this at first simply done work belies a hidden complexity... as the theme/title implies, what is sighted depends on the viewer's point- of-view... it could be any of a number of things, including a sailor coming home, a lover awaiting her, or a new cityscape to wonder at... the one thing which the work does show is that there is a strong positiveness of what is sighted - the figure shows no fear or unsettledness, only delight... had thought of actually putting up futuristic cityscape - but figured it'd be better to have it not so blatent, and let the sighting be what is in the viewer's mind...

'Reflections' this was one of a series which involved an oasis in the desert called 'Vault", and this was from within the interior of the extinct volcano... it is a reflection as if a mirror over the mantle, looking out across the oasis interior.. as is usual, there is a multiplicity of meanings in the theme/title, one being the look of the woman, as well as that all the books are reversed lettering [of course, in reality, the backs of the books would not even be seen in a reflection]...there is a contemplative viewing, as if there was more which should be within the oasis than is shown, as if there was unfinished business, both in that regard, and of the regards to the woman...

'transubstanciation' as mentioned earlier, figures are important to many of the renderings - and not just figures, but naked ones, with all the implied glory of human sexuality... here is one of my first ones, which is showing a sexual woman with an expressed sexual tension - as witness her flowing joy juice, which in turn is nurishing the plant - which in turn is thrusting its male flower part towards her sexuality... notice that the two are the living aspects of the landscape, and thus displaying a sort of variety of 'from ashes to ashes, dust to dust' motif... a wheels within wheels circularity...

'distant wonders' another of my early works, where I was still very cliche - riddened... this is the only one in which I did the border and window effect, which goes a long ways to giving the illusion of distance in the fore area... and yes, there are still places where this amount of the night sky can be seen, giving one the real feel of being 'out there' ...

'progression' the earliest extant of my works to utilize the metaphoric relationship, 'progression' actually was a result of a mistake which was covered over by what became one of my best known creations - the onion tree... as can be readily discerned, the theme/title is very much a cliche, tho the particular way it was done has originality in it to some extent... one of my regrets is that I never played up on this, since there was a host of related visuals which could have used that tree, and extentions of that theme/titling...

'view master' the final consequence , so far, of the 'reaching out' is in the so-called self-portrait, 'view master'... I am in a space suit standing on a easel platform doing a rendering of the same scene rendered in the mural - in and among the rings particles of a gas giant planet... one thing to note, in regards to these murals, is that except for the first one, in which the image came first and was refined by the theme/title, all were derived visually from the theme/title - that is, from the abstract idea to the visual concrete... it was also not a conscious choice that these murals progressed from the initial one to this one in the order in which they did - which, in effect reflected a growing resoluting to the initial conflictings involving loneliness and reaching out... now, one might note that the figure is small in comparison to the vastness of the space scene... yet, at the same time, observe that the figure is in control of his course of action... thus the figure size is not to diminish the human's importance, but to conjoin it to the immensity of space... this is further recognised thru the theme/title itself - a 'master' is one who is in control of things... note, too, that the scene is as if the VIEWER is also among the ring particles - and thus is sharing, tho in a subordinate role, the adventure of being out there... now, as to such things as the number of major and minor rocks, there is nothing significant - they are where they are for the sake of the drama, for I never had consciously considered their numericalness as worthy of thought... if I subconsciously posed a particular set of numbers, I've not noticed it, and would only consider it as a sort of serendipity... had, however, it consciously occurred to me, then yes, I would have added such symbolism as that to a great degree [which would have elevated the work to a higher level of precision and forethinking - in other words, a greater and more masterpiece of a rendering]... do I regret not having thought such - no... it was not part of the intention of the conception... in this case, beyond the theme/title and the visual, I was not interested - the work as stated was more than sufficient for me at the time...

'line of sight' taking the reaching idea and making it blatent resulted in the unfinished mural, 'line of sight' [it is still in its blue stage, having never bothered to color the work, tho now find it attractive in its own right, like a blue pen/ink work only in acrylics]... it is a rendering wherein the desert is on the left side, a wall of rock isolating it and becoming a clift overlooking a floating sea-village, with extensive marina... deep offshore, in the far background, is a floating space launch pad, this time with a shuttle type vehicle lifting off in front of the rising sun... rich in detail all over the canvas, I found it, as said, delightful in this, its primal state...

'leap frog' taking this sense of life to the next level, or stage as it were, I showed a possible end to the reaching - tho this meant, actually, further reaching... 'leap frog' was the only mural actually commissioned, tho it was according to my peculiar criteria... they wanted a sea-ish view, since they lived in the Capes, yet from my particular vantagepoint... the 'frog', of course, you don't see - the 'frog' of course is in the mind... and, while it is not clear in this poor photo, that is a space launch station in the distance... this not only allows the 'leap' across the vast space of waters, but the next 'leap' into the vaster space of the sky - and the implied beyond, the 'space' itself... there is also that first leap - of the viewer into the rendering...

"Curse of Loneliness"

'curse of loneliness' border="0" /> for myself, one of the best ways to do this showing is thru the use of "Visioneer Windows"(c)(R), picture window sized murals with a vision of possibilities in them... I first had thought of this as if from one's habitat into another world, as a way of extending the room in which is hung the work... in most respects, this still rings true... but I have also noted that the use of metaphoric relationships in a 'grande landscape' mode allows me more in the way of abstracr contemplation wherein the vista shown becomes almost secondary to the theme/title... my fist foray into doing these murals is like that, after a fashion... called 'the curse of loneliness', it is the only 'pure' landscape I have done, and its relationship to the pro-human stance is directly thru the theme/titling - an expression of a negative that re-affirms the implied opposite, a strong positive... the act of the tree'reaching out' to the world beyond is an act of hope... it was a therapy work, done at a time I was being overwhelmed with a sense of isolation, and trying to break free of that depressing feeling... note, tho, that despite the depressingness that the work evolved from, it is not a depressing rendering... I discovered, somewhat to my astonishment, that my sense of life, my wisdom of life, is so fixed that even when I am down in the dumps [and everyone is at one time or another, sometimes several times], my work reflects what is indeed the most important - life affirmation... that is why, despite all the blue in the work [a reflection of my painting technique of glazing a la Max Parrish], the tree is vividly green leaved and a tan/brown trunk...

"seed" a consequence of this sense of organics, recognising as I mentioned regarding 'cornered stone' the implication of something further, is the notion in another thematically related work, 'seed'... here, the growth factor is in 'spreading the civilization', so to speak, by extending the habitat to new areas... this is not only in regards to the buildings themselves, but with regard to the land - note that this scene is of a terraformed craterland, obviously another world, obviously a look to the future... this yet another aspect of my renderings, my sense of life, my wisdom of life - that there are two ways to view the world... one is looking to the past - nostalgia... the other is looking to the future... one is a retreat from living... the other is an affirmation of living... I say this because biologically there are only two choices to make - grow or die... this tallies in with Rand's observation on the purpose of Art - to show, for its own sake, what the artist considers to be important - a visualization of values, '...the experience of being in a world or universe wherein those values have been successfully achieved'... as she also added, 'Art ...is a metaphysical mirror of the person's soul,' in which '...what should be reflected is in the nature of a salute.'...

'roots' as a variation on the same general idea, consider another work, 'roots', which also depicts a cityscape cliffside... but note - the angle of perception has shifted from looking down to looking up... looking down is an appropriate way of 'cornering' something, to help contain or hold something... looking up, on the other hand, is a personification of how plants grow, from the roots upwards to the sky... roots also grow from the ground, or clinging to the side of something, like a trunk or a stump, establishing a firm foundation...

'cornered stone' when whimsy is removed from consideration, and more thoughtful theme/titles are worked on, a deeper level shows, one in which a multitude of layers can be peeled back, like the layers of an onion, whether directly or implied... as an example, consider 'cornered stone', perhaps the most conceptually developed of abstract-to-concrete... doing a double take on words, playing with the hidden 'cornerstone', as well as the word, 'cornered', a curved wall of canyon is taken as backdrop, with a canyon city on the curving side... the most obvious of the lot is taking the wildness of the canyon and 'cornering it', that is, taming it - to some extent at least, to put it to civilized use... again, it obviously is a 'pro-human' stance, a recognition that altering a world is NOT the same as destroying it, only changing it - and the implied recognition that change is natural... the implied 'cornerstone' alluded to in the theme/title, also implies that this is an opening gambit to a human structured changing, instead of the haphazard nature changing that is a consequence of the dynamics of the world of reality...

'AUgmentation' this one goes further with the whimsicalness, wherein the title not only does the 'golden egg' notion, but uses the whole word itself as to pointing out a shift to the visual - that it is a CHICKEN laying a gold egg... but, of course, the 'augmentation' comes from the artist, who has made the egg gold, this being implied by the paint can on which the chicken is sitting, the implication being that 'man' adds to the improvement of the world around him - not just visually but in value... note that each of these examples, despite being cliche riddened, and on perhaps the whimsical side, make moral statements, as do all renderings... the universe in each is sharp and clear, no blurring ambiguities here... nor, for that matter, will you find that in any of my works... clarity is the hallmark of rationality... note, too, that the colors are not muddled, but very defined, vibrant, and pure... note that the viewpoint in each is positive, life enhancing - there is no sense of temporal decay in any of the works... note also that in the whimsy, there is no frivolousness, that there is definite purposefulness in each of the examples, a sense of goal directiveness...

"bug Off" this again shows the difference a sense of life has to presentation... not only that, but a flippant remark is being turned into more than a 'cute' piece - if one looks closely at the work... consider - the bug, a leafhopper, is the only truly life-sized object in the work... the leaf is almost life-sized, depending on what kind of plant is presumed [and there is no such plant, as I use that as a prop, a background, just as literature uses real events as backdrop for the story involved]... the rest, however, surrealistically shrinks, such that the brick concourse on which the potted plant sits is most definitely NOT life-sized... why? well, one could take it as a matter of perspective, wherein the bug is 'in your face', as it were, being life-sized, which takes the phrase and right there gives it both the literal and the figurative meanings... note, too, however, that the bug is leaping to the side, not at the viewer, nor away from the viewer, but to the right, implying another phrase, 'the right way to go'... there is also a sense of exhuberance at the bug leaping, a brightly colored zest for life, sort of reversing the connotation of the title phrase from negative to positive...

"timeless piece" in dealing with understanding renderings, it is best, like in literature, to give examples... while most of my figure works are yet to be rendered, there are, however, a number of examples to cover the other aspects... to begin with, i suppose it is instructive to look at the mundane, the outrightly cliche ridden... the first question that would be asked then is - if knowing these were mundane, why bother doing them? all i can say is that while i knew they were cliche ridden, i still found them to be of interest because the end results were MY interpretations of the cliches... they were the 'ordinary', as seen thru MY sense of life, MY understanding of metaphoric relationships... some, like 'timeless piece', is more of an exercise in technique, my attempt at a trompe l'oeil - and the only real thing going for it is the brightness of the leather fob, and the bright round metal case... nothing fancy, just plain and durable - which elevates the blank face to something more, a statement of solidity, of the positive, of the enduring, a far cry from the usual presentations which tend to laud emptiness, banality, and superficiality...

MORAL STATEMENTS AND RENDERINGS

it is my impression that those who claim that one cannot show much if anything of morals in a rendering, say such because they do not have a clear understanding of just what constitutes moral statements, other than thru literature... it is very instructive, therefore, to remember that ethics or morals is the science of VALUES... i know i've said this more than once, but it bears repeating - because most persons have a confused understanding of just morals or ethics consists of... VALUES are what a person seeks to gain and/or keep... they are acquired thru choices... but the only values really worth seeking are VIABLE values... when i gave that list of alternative things to look for in assessing a rendering, those were value expressions, and the answering of which of the alternatives expresses the morals involved - and these are indeed applicable to ANY rendering, including still-lifes... in fact, historically, still-lifes were the most profoundly expressed renderings involving morals, wherein the symbolisms were often very blatent, even if the morals expressed were factually anti-human - that is, not in the best interest or well-being of the person... there's more to this of course [there's ALWAYS more], but the point which should be kept in mind is to consider everything in terms of VALUES - what is chosen to be put in or left out, where, how big or little, how clear or obstuse, and so on... once there is the understanding that the moral or ethical is the viable values chosen, then it becomes clear where and how to see the expressings in the renderings...

FIGURELESSNESS

a second major aspect to rendering is when figures are NOT used, at least directly, but rather the effects of humanity are portrayed - either as still life, or as part of scapes [landscapes, seascapes, spacescapes, and so forth]... it is only when no figures or human effects are used that there can become a problem... this is because this absence of humanity is making a value-judgment, an expression of a fundamental view of humanity that says that humanity is not considered important enough to be in a landscape, etc., or that his/her presence is not considered to be a natural part of the world... this is, of course, a profoundly anti-human notion - even if it is not given thought to as being as such, or not intended as such... once again, however, knowing the nature and proper purpose of Art, and the rational ethics behind the purpose, allows that there can be a defense against it... yet - even as landscape, a case can be made on the 'benevolent universe' premise, thru the use of metaphoric personification... this has to do with the fact that 'man is the measure of all things' - in the nature of acquiring knowledge, and this is because measurement is an anthropocentric [man centered] process... the concretes, the specific images which a person directly grasps, are the basis and the standard to which everything else is related... if you add to that, that 'Art is not the means to literal transcription', and recognise that there is little need, if any, for rendering in a recorder mode, then thru personification there can be a pro-human stance given utilizing the non-human in the rendering...

FIGURES AND MORALITY

perhaps the most troubling aspect, when dealing with figures in a work, is whether or not to clothe them... most artists do not, as said, think in terms of the fact that whatever is included within a work is, by the fact that it is included, of fundamental importance... by the same token, what is NOT included is also making a statement of fundamental importance - the fact that it is not considered of major importance... clothing, even for an artist, is generally regarded as a norm... yet the fact that a naturalness - nudity - is being covered, is making a statement regarding one's relationship with the universe...as Rand pointed out, 'Art is not the means of literal transcription... this is the difference between a work of Art and a news story or a photograph.'... as such, what is shown in a work of Art pertains to one's fundamental view of a person's relationship to reality - which is why so many artists use the nude in their works, to establish the sense of universality, that what is shown pertains to all time... to a rational person, there is no problem - what is pro-human is to the good; what glorifies and/or accentuates human qualities is to the good [and a person's sexuality is very certainly a human quality] [and the first step towards showing that is portraying the naked figure]... the difficulty, then, lies in confronting the culture, which is, in many respects, in am anti-human viewing of one's self - thanks to the religions within it... because this has been the dominant - indeed, for most, the ONLY known code - there is difficulty in being able to mount a cognitive defense against it for most artists... even more confounding is being able to express sexuality of humans in a work - indeed, one would have less problems showing a bull mounting a cow than to humans lovemaking - and oddly enough, easier to show lovemaking than to showing explicit sexual arousal... in common parlance, this is called pornography - in fact, it is a religious attack on the sexual nature of human beings, and it is in knowing the nature and proper purpose of Art, and the rational ethics behind that purpose, that there can be a defense against this anti-human ranting...

TITLING

once having explored the sense of life of first impressions, a themescape work will have the theme/title to consider - a metaphoric relationship either between the elements within the work, or one dealing extraniously to the world outside the work... in so doing, there is an enrichment of understanding about some aspect of the world around - the greater the universality, the greater the work... initially, of course, it is to be expected that a lot of cliche metaphoring will be used... this is NOT anything to be concerned with, as the practice of thinking in terms of metaphoric relationships needs the mundane to help set a pattern of thought... not only that, there can sometimes be cliches given new life and new twists of insight that can be expanded into a truly original and worthwhile work... the exercises would be like a sort of draino, flushing out the stale and ordinary and common, and allowing fresh ones to take place...

THE NATURE OF A RENDERING

one of the things which needs correcting on is a misconception that titles are extranious fixture to all but literature... wrong... titles[or theme/titles, as i prefer to consider them ] are, properly, as much an integral part of the rendering as is the case with writing... perhaps it is more so, since it is the key to elevating the rendering from just a 'sense of life' to something more... initially, of course, the viewer is drawn to the visual work sans anything else about it... without knowing ANYTHING else - artist, title, era in which done - the work is firstviewed as a glimpse into a self-contained world... it is seen as a univeres on its own... within that framework, tho, there is much which can be gleamed... the metaphysical view, for instance, is instantly discernable - there is a vast difference in how a benevolent universe view contrasts with a malivolent one... is it a world of flux, or is it one of identity? if a landscape, are there vegetation, or is it barren? if vegetation, are they blooming, dying, or dead? are animals in health, or malformed? the humans - happy, serious, fearful? are the colors bright or murky? is it viewed with clarity, or is it as if from a nearsighted without glasses? what is the most prominant feature - the main focus? how is humanity placed within this universe? what size - larger than life, or tiny and insignificant? if no figures, what are the main entities - how are they placed? is there a significant difference of size between setting and object? is the emphasis placed more on one thing than another? figures - their posture: upright and proud or elegant, or bent and awkward? is the painting smeared or distorted, or orderly and complex? the light - bright, or subdued? in still life, are the objects glistening, or tarnished? are they solid, or fractured?

THE ACT OF THEMESCAPING

most artists react from the visual - that is, they see in the world around them a scene or objects which in the manner of their setting or arrangement as first seen, intrigues... it is of interest, compositionally... perhaps it is something even so simple as a butterfly alighting on a flower... perhaps it is a series of bottles on a shelf... a themescapist sees that - AND MORE... by training to think in terms of metaphors, a themescapist is able to bring to consciousness a 'universalness' out of that incident or setting seen in the world... this means that a themescapist takes from the given and CONSCIOUSLY raises it to a visualization of some fundamentalness... this can be done by using it as part of a larger visualization, for instance... or it can be done by shifting the components for better emphasis, as a crystalization of some importance worth showing - which is given notice thru the theme/title... a themescapist is also, because of this training to think in terms of metaphors, able to draw from the memory banks [the mental 'picture file' so to speak] a visualization, at least in part, of something read or said - the abstraction theme/title itself being the catalyst... sometimes, tho, this does not come with any sense of immediacy - there are in my journal many, many listings of theme/titles for which i have yet to have a visualization of, or for which the ones i have are nebulous at best... but the theme/title itself intrigues me... in many ways, this is the fun and the challenge of being a themescapist - this questing for discovery, for a new insight into this wonderful world we live in... by the way, these theme/titles, either way they are approached, whether from the visual first to seeing the abstraction out of it, or from the abstraction to seeing a concrete visualization, do not necessarily have to be profound... there is plenty of room in the world for lightheartedness, even whimsical - SO LONG AS IT IS LIFE ENHANCING, an expression of enlightenment in the minutae is still an enrichment in the understanding of the fabric of complexity which is the universe...

ART AND SECULARITY

good art is totally secular... one can project, thru various degrees of imagination, possibilities - but these have to be grounded in reality... in any case, as said before, there are unlimited possibilities... one can, however, set some limits by establishing the sphere or sector which most intrigues - still lifes, grand landscapes, and so forth, for instance - perhaps because of the specific challenges involved, or personal limitations, or combinations... or one can, as i presently do, be open to all areas, letting them fall as they may as they come to my attention... remember, as Rand said, 'the basic purpose of Art is NOT to teach but th SHOW - to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe...'... the ethics involved is in that aspect of how the artist selects, being that '...according to the artist's fundamental view of reality'... this personally involves the sense of living in a world wherein my values have been successfully achieved - that world as shown in my renderings... that it why altho i have certain preferences, grand 'picture window' landscapes being foremost, i have chosen for now to sort of 'jump' all over the board, so to speak, in order to provide examples of a number of the various possibilities... the differences in rendering sizes also have a bearing on the work at hand - indeed, sometimes have found that the original size was not merited by the work in question, and have had to either redo the mock-up sketches, or rethink the whole thing altogether... some might consider that this 'jumping around' is a problem, but i consider it as a consequence of the fact that there's an immense curiosity about a great many things... so, never is known from one day to the next just what new curiosities may be manifested and in what way - and the subconscious is let to do its own work, with the consciousness analyzing the results when it comes forth...and i think this is true of all rational persons, even those who have laser-like devoted themselves to single pursuits... in one respect, at least, this is an advantage... there is greater diversity... not only that, thru the use of different angles on a theme [using, for instance, theme/titles that are conceptually similar], i can show greater use of metaphors in being able to show relationships across a wide range of emphasises that might not occur to a person otherwise - thus enabling and enriching both my own understanding of the universe, and the viewer's...in a way it's like science - a process of discoveries...

INDIVIDUALIST ETHICS

philosopher Ayn Rand's perhaps greatest achievement was to devise an ethical code for what constituted the individualist/trader syndrone, tho she was not aware of it as such... she was just aware that the code which had been used since before recorded history was an inhuman code at base - and she wanted one which fitted the proper nature of a human being... in so doing, of course, she was upsetting and altering the course of history of the past twenty-five hundred years... she rejected the sacrificial view of humanity, proclaiming that each person has theright to exist for his/her OWN sake, not to be a slave/serf and exist for the sake of others... she pointed out that this was a sum-plus world, not a zero-sum one - but that it required CREATORS to increase the wealth, not thieves, and that the only way this can be achieved is if each person is free to do what, in effect, comes naturally [tho it has to be learned]: use the faculty of reason... bridging the 'is/ought' problem that confounded philosophers for centuries, she proclaimed that what is rational is for the good, and what is irrational is the evil - because a human's primary means of survival as a human is to be rational, even tho that is a matter of choice [the 'free-will' factor] and the alternative is suicidal being... she pointed out, in other words, that the proper way of looking at the world is not thru the lens of 'otherism', but thru the eyes of one's own - 'selfism'... furthermore, that to do so would NOT result in the acting of a brute - as her detractors smeared - but that of the trader, who gives value for value, non-coercively...all of the philosophies of 'otherism' were and are anti-worldly... only a philosophy of 'selfism', which observes the world OBJECTIVELY, and is for the benefit of and well-being of a person in THIS world, the world that counts - the REAL world... this is because, in her system-building of a non-contradictory view of existance, she tied the ethics in with the metaphysics of the primacy of existance, thereby eliminating any supernatural necessity or implication what so ever - ALL of that was a fantasy, inimical to the well-being of any human, and should be discarded... what repercussions has this to Art?

SUBJECT AND ETHICS

as Rand pointed out in her essay ART AND SENSE OF LIFE, 'two distinct, but interrelated elements of a work of Art are the crucial means of projecting its sense of life: the SUBJECT and the STYLE - WHAT an artist chooses to present and HOW he presents it...the subject of an art work expresses a view of a man's existance, while the style expresses a view of a man's consciousness... it is the subject [qualified by the theme] that projects an art work"s view of man's place in the universe... the theme of an art work is the link uniting the subject and its style...' in choosing a subject, there are unlimited possibilities... a lot, I think, depends on the diversity of the interests that the particular artist has... a lot also depends on one's understanding of ethics - and this is where I think lies a most important underlying element to Art... in one of her more controversial statements, she proclaimed that 'Art is the indespensible medium for the communication of a moral ideal...'... she further stated that while 'moral values are inextricably involved in Art,' it is 'only as a consequence, NOT a causal determinant.'... Art is '...the concretization of a moral ideal,' she argued, 'not a textbook on how to become one'... but which ethics? the one pandered to over the centuries, causing countless deaths and disillusions? the one whose virtues are of the tribal/taking syndrone?

THEMING

all renderings, by their nature, contain themes... most artists, however, having only that 'sense of life' to guide them in deciding what is to be produced, are generally not consciously aware of just what it is that is the theme... it is, therefore, usually treated as if it were a consequence, an underlining intuitiveness that comes out, if at all consciously, AFTER the fact... indeed, it is usually the result of some emotional reaction to the 'scene'... Art, however, is NOT concerned with actual events or occurences per se - it is concerned with their metaphysical or fundamental significance to [properly] the rational being...

I am a themescapist because I CONSCIOUSLY choose the theme, and it is thru the use of metaphors that i peruse the showing of my view of the world... I take abstract ideas and render visualizations of them... like a novelist who chooses a title for his/her book which CRYSTALIZES THE ESSENCE of that work [or should], so, too, I take what I call a 'theme/title' and work with it, figuring ut the best way to render it - how complex, how big the work is to be, whether it is to be a collection of objects as a still-life or landscape of some kind, and so forth...

CONNOTATIONS

in literature, there are several ways of intensifying connotative usage... there's, basically, imagery, metaphor, similie, personification, synecdoche, metonymy, symbolism, allegory, paradox, overstatement or hyperbole, understatement, irony and allusion... obviously not all are applicable to rendering... some overlap - synecdoche and metonymy are almost alike, and not particularly adaptable to rendering, at least not in a primary or major way... same, too, with similie, which is an explicit version of metaphor... hyperbole and understatement might best work with style rather than with fundamemtal substance... the same with irony and allusion, which is a form of symbolism, as is also allegory... paradox and personification might work, but better as secondary rather than primary... this leaves three as primary means - imagery, symbolism, and metaphor... as a rendering is itself an imaging, there is therefore no separate dealing with imagery in a painting... because a rendering is a SELECTIVEness in its creation, EVERY object within it is automatically a symbol to some greater or lesser degree...  this leaves the metaphor - which is a comparison between objects or things which at first glance seem essentially UNlike...

POETRY AND ITS NATURE

poetry is the closest in the literary arena to a painting in its approach... indeed, a painting could be considered as a logical, even inevitable outgrowth of poetry - the ULTIMATE in 'saying more and saying it more intensely', with the saying being completely visual, completely synthesized into the SHOWING more and more intensely... in achieving this, it is instructive to remember the distinction between DENOTATION and CONNOTATION - which applies as readily to an object chosen for rendering as it does to a word in a poem... a 'denotation' is the specific concept which the word is a symbol of or for - the dictionary definition... a 'connotation' is an associated meaning attatched to an object or word thru contextual usage... connotation is very important to an artist because it is one of the ways in which meaning can be concentrated or enriched, and there are often several connotations to a specific concept or word or object... by the same token, just as a word or object often has a variety of connotations, so, too, it can have several denotations - and this allows also for an enrichment to the rendering... it's thru connotations, however, that I have found a solution to the problem of what to render - and why...

NATURE OF GUIDANCE

one of the criticisms leveled against Rand' s view of Art was that she did not provide an abundance of examples to illustrate her contentions on various aspects of Art, and because she used literature [ the most developed of the Arts ] as her primary in examples... because it was not so obvious - especially to those NOT in the respective fields ] how it might apply to the other arenas, it was presumed by many that she errored, and that her notions were not, really, applicable to all of the Arts... I have long held that this is not only an uninaginative and very concrete-bound viewing, but very wrong as well... a guide is not a textbook, but an INDICATION of certain directions... it is also a hallmark of reality that everything is not all known, and that there are in many areas a lot of work to be done in gaining understanding... there are lots of theoretical work which do not see immediate application , and that show immense needs of learning on how to practicalize... if the principles hold true, however, then the fact that understanding how to apply the theories being at present lacking does in no way discredit the theories... it is merely a recognition that further work is needed in that area of thought... a final note of thought - just as most artists are not philosophers, so most philosophers are not artists, and practicalizing an aspect of abstraction in a field not particularly familiar to them may well leave them with a dearth of creativity, however much this may be displayed in their own fields...

CONCISENESS

the literary arena of Art has been around since the beginning of language... as such, it is the most developed, conceptually... in this development of presenting a person's view of the world, including the sensory experience of being in the world - what of it that was known - to others, and the necessity of finding ways to remember these views - especially at a time when the written word had not yet been devised - the results became poetry... poetry's aim was not to just present events [tho that may very well have been its initial usage, or coincided initially], but - as indicated - to present EXPERIENCES...indeed, this became its prime purpose...

but you can only hold so much in your mind at any one time... consequently, forms had to be devised to encapsule as much in as minimal space as possible, yet be retainable as maximally as possible... poetry, therefore, says MORE and says it MORE INTENSELY than does ordinary language... this is so even when the spoken language became more permanent with the written language...

as a means of finding ways to make a better rendering, I have found it very instructive to take a look at the various forms which have been utilized in poetry, and seeing where these may, if possible, be adapted to the painter's end... I say this because I maintain that the fundamental principles alluded to in Rand's essays on Art hold true in ALL the arenas of Art...

THEMESCAPING

I am a themescapist... I consider it the ultimate rational purposefulness of the artist... why might I have come to this conclusion, and what is the consequence of this?

to begin with, it has never been my interest in just being a 'scenerist', one who does landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, and so on,whether real or imagined... these are in effect recorder modes, outdated largely by the invention of photography... this attitude became even more so after being exposed to the works of the philosopher Ayn Rand, who pointed out the true nature of Art, and how important a field of endeavor it really is... nor did it seem enough to continue with just a sense of life about my works - especially since the 'wisdom of life' brought me to a fully integrated non-contradictory view of reality... of course, when I say that, I do not mean that there then would be an absence of the 'sense of life'... what I mean is that this sense of life becomes thereby non-contradictory in structure... as consequence, too, I do not expect the viewers of my works to grasp all of the multitudes of implications and delicacies of the works at first viewing... Art's purpose, remember, is for contrmplation, and contemplation requires SEVERAL viewings and thinkings on these works... to get the viewers' attention, therefore, to garner the most impact, would need the use of the cognitive effort - thru, that is, achieving a 'wisdom of life' approach to Art...

however, the only thing I had to go on, as far as I could see, in my attempt to achieve this were examples from the field of literature - even tho a painting, for instance, is a one-shot deal... in a painting, obviously, one must seek to have it put all together in a single view... a literary work, on the other hand, even the most concise one of a poem, makes use of many words, and as much length as is considered required to make the proper presentation... tho the principles remain the same, the artist has a far grater challenge in seeking to achieve the same DEGREE of precision of showing that view of existance [assuming that degree of precision is even desired in the context of the presentation]...

UNETHICALNESS IN ART

in the field of Art, there are two ways the unethicalness can show... the first is by having a work passed off as if it were a work of Art - either deliberately as in the case of 'abstract art', or thru misunderstanding of the nature of what Art is, as in the case of photography... the second is by presenting in a work of Art a false view of existance...

a work of Art, as Rand pointed out, provides a visualization for contemplating being in one's own ideal world... since a person lives by altering his/her physical background - the given world he/she is in - to serve that person's purpose, that person must first define and then create that person's own values... but to best do so, that person need a visualization of those values - the experience of sensing being in a universe in which those values have been successfully achieved...Art, in effect, is a 'metaphysical mirror of the person"s soul,' as Rand wrote, 'an expression of the sense of life'... properly, she then went on to state, 'what should be reflected is in the nature of a salute'... if it does not show this, the work may be a work of Art, but it may be unethical in that it shows a fraudulant view of existance...

how, then, does one go about this visualization? Rand said that the closer an artist comes to a CONCEPTUAL method of functioning, visually, the greater the work... this is because it is thru concepts that a person functions in the world - and it is thru the visualization of concepts that a person transmits intelligibility... this is the crux of defining what is or is not a work of Art... to be a work of Art, it MUST BE INTELLIGIBLE - and intelligible means being a re-presentational work... if it is not intelligible, if one cannot know what it is that is being presented, it ceases to be a work of Art... that is why, for instance, so-called 'abstract art' or 'non-representational art' is properly NOT Art... at best it may be a glorification of aspects of the decorative arts, a subset of aesthetics embodied in the Crafts, as a sort of simulated texture - but NOT Art...

ETHICALS AND ART

the consequence of having a correct view of reality, of recognising the primacy of existance, is that it allows one to KNOW what is Art - and what is NOT Art... what is true, and what is false - and WHY...

earlier, mention was made about the importance of values in the showing aspect of a work of Art, and that a value is what you act to gain and/or keep... ethics is the science of values... a value, however, is not the same as an importance... importance in a work of Art is what is involved in that 'selective re-presentation... of aspects of reality' of the definition... the ethics is involved in that aspect of how the artist selects, being that '...according to the artist's fundamental view of reality', what Rand referred to as 'metaphysical value-judgments'...

the primary values in ethics are what are called moral values - guides or philosophical roadmaps that aid in achieving our goals in life according to our nature as human beings... these primary values are the CHOSEN, as they must be values UNDERSTOOD instead of being merely commanded, based on the objective recognition of what is required, man qua man [as Rand would say ], for survival AS HUMAN BEINGS...

a TRUE 'wisdom of life' is a NON-CONTRADICTORILY integrated view of existance... there are, tho, other values besides the primary ones... these are values hierarchially arrayed according to CONTEXTUAL importance - in line with the primary values... the more non-contradictory these lesser values are, the more integrated they will be in the ethical structuring... the greater the understanding of the inter-relationship of the values, the more consistant is the acting to achieving those goals in life... because of the immense variation in the individuation of persons, because of the differences in the specific enviromental influences [internal as well as external ] to the persons, there is a variable perimeter to the ranges of these lesser values, culminating in the immense variety of individuals - all who could act rationally in achieving an uncountable number of goals... real values, as such, ENHANCE human life, while false values are frauds which seek to undercut human life enhancement...

THE ISSUE OF INTEGRATION

most artists, however, are not philosophers... most, indeed, are not even aware of the importance philosophy has on their field of endeavor... they are, therefore, left with just their sense of life to guide themselves...but, because we are cognitive beings, we HAVE to have a philosophy, SOME sort of integrated view of existance - there is no choice in this, since it is in our nature... the only choice we do have is whether to consciously choose that philosophy, integrating it according to the facts of reality, in a NON-CONTRADICTORY manner - or to acquire it according to a collection of assumptions, traditional notions, myths, with a few facts thrown in [since it is impossible to totally avoid dealing with reality], creating a contradictory-laden view which does not allow you to know which parts are for real and which are false, and which are down-right harmful [which is to say how most persons hold their philosophy, even if they are not really aware of it as being a philosophy, and call it something else - say, a religion]...

WHAT, THEN, DEFINES ART?

as said before, the purpose of a work of Art - any work of Art - is to show, to present to the world what the artist considers of fundamental importance... but if the work is to be of any worth for contemplation, it must reflect VALUES... Rand defined a value as 'what you act to gain and/or keep'... in order for a person to be able to figure out which values are best desired - and why [that is, to be able to cognitively justify them], there is this need of having an all-inclusive view of existance... furthermore, there is a need to be able to figure out which of these world viewpoints is correct - because a value, to be of any usefulness, must reflect reality, not fantasy...

but this all-inclusive view is so vast that no person could possibly be able to hold it within conscious awareness... there is just too much of it - way too much of it - for the conscious mind... yet, in order to provide yourself with a groundbase for placing your values by which you guide yourself, for INTEGRATING these specifics into the sum and whole, it is essential that you have SOME means of being able to bring this all-inclusiveness to your conscious attention...
that is what Art is all about - and THAT is the nature and true importance in being an artist... it is also what allows for a complete definition of Art, an objective, all-inclusive definition based on the nature of a human being:

Art is a selective re-presentation by the artist of aspects of reality according to how the artist fundamentally views reality...

this is why it is important to have a correct view of reality, of existance - the correct metaphysics [which is simply the term used for studying the fundamental nature of reality]... to do less is to be doing a grave dis-service to yourself as an artist, and to your viewers who seek from you examples of affirming their sense of life... as Rand pointed out, Art takes the abstractions of metaphysics and makes them into specifics, the concretes - presenting them as images... in other words, it brings the immense concept of metaphysics to the perceptual level of your consciousness, allowing you [and the viewer] to comprehend them AS IF THEY THEMSELVES WERE PERCEPTS... a faulty view of existance, therefore, a faulty metaphysics, would bring forth false images of viewing the world - including the notion that images are not needed at all...

BUILDING BLOCKS

Rand defines a CONCEPT as 'a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition'... she further defines a PERCEPT as 'a group of sensations AUTOMATICALLY retained and integrated by the brain of living organism'... according to her theory of concepts, humans get the most direct form of information about reality thru our senses in the form of percepts, that at a conscious level only percepts, not sensations, can be retained by the mind... it is because concepts are automatically retained that the concept of objectivity comes in... 'objectivity' arises because concepts are formed by a specific process, and consequently bear a specific kind of relationship to reality...

while all knowledge is acquired thru the use of the reasoning faculty, however, this does not irrelevate intuitiveness - there are many levels of awareness which are receptive to sensory imput, and indeed it is the subconscious which has the task of assimulating while the conscious is occupied with more immediate and perhaps important matters... still, it is the conscious reasoning, by way of introspection, that takes the subconscious input and give validity to it where it is warrented, by identifying and integrating the facts therein... the error of Platonism is the inability or unwillingnessof its adherents to FULLY grasp the difference between a person's inner state, and the outerworld - between the perceiver and the perceived...

the primacy of existance, however, is THE fundamental axiom: existance exists... and all attempts to refute it necessarily involve using it... as such, it is not an act of faith, but the recognition of the irreducible fact of reality - that it IS... moreover, it is the recognition that to be is to be SOMETHING, to have a nature, to have IDENTITY... and, in addition, there is a third aspect involved, a very crucial one which corrects the Platonic problem of the perceiver and the perceived - that the act of grasping that 'existance exists' implies two corallory axioms, [1]'that something exists, which is perceived' and [2]'that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists... if nothing exists, there can be no consciousness - a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms... a consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms - before it could identify itself as conscious, it had to be conscious of something... if that which is claimed to perceive does not exist, what is possessed is not consciousness' [Ayn Rand, from ATLAS SHRUGGED]

BELIEVING AND KNOWING

having a belief about something is quite different from knowing something... a belief is a concept considered as truth by an act of faith - that is, the act of claiming truth by negating the use of reason... but REASON is that faculty which every human possesses which perceives, identifies, and INTEGRATES the materials provided by your senses... that is the function of your senses: to put you into contact with the world around you - and THAT IS ALL THAT THEY ARE THERE FOR, nothing else... ALL of your KNOWLEDGE, however, is acquired by the use of REASON - that is ITS function, its purpose, why you have it...

contemplation is an aspect of a person's consciousness, of a specific kind of consciousness - CONCEPTUAL consciousness...reason operates as conceptual consciousness... and this is where Art comes in, for Art is DERIVED from the fact that a person's kind of consciousness is conceptual [and, as an aside, why only sapients have or can have Art] - and that it is for the continuance of this conceptual consciousness that Art serves the need of, a PSYCHOLOGICAL need... the acquisition of knowledge, and the means of deciding specific directions of action, come not from perception, as is found in other animals - but by means of abstractions, concepts... as a consequence, the best way - indeed the only way - tp truly understanding what Art is and how to improve the practicing of it is thru keeping in mind the nature and function of concepts...

SOCIAL STUDIES

as said at the beginning, according to the philosopher Rand, the primary purpose, the fundamental purpose, of a work of art is but one - contemplation... "a work of art - ANY work of art," she said, "is NOT the means to any other end; it is ITSELF its own end: to SHOW, for its own sake, what the artist considers fundamentally important, and what the viewer who enjoys the work sees as an affirmation of his/her own view of life... that is what makes a work of art so PERSONAL - why one likes a work and another dislikes the same work - the affirmation or non-affirmation of the viewer's own sense of life..."... and because PERSONAL MEANS NON-SOCIAL, this requires a different manner of approaching Art than other disciplines...

to begin with, one must note that in Jane Jacobs' SYSTEMS OF SURVIVAL, she observed that there were only two ways for humans to be able to survive: to take or to trade, and that these two ways are the choices only humans make - all the rest of the animals have only the one, to take...furthermore, she showed that these evolved into two fundamentally different worldviews... while she presumed both were viable in terms of human survival, in fact they paralleled another set of fundamental worldviews - the one pointed out so forcefully by Rand: the primacy of consciousness versus the primacy of existance... the first, the essence of Platonism, with all its tribalist configurations, that consciousness is primary, that what one thinks [or presumes] determines what it is, is - not surprisingly - the groundbase giving support to the notion [first expounded by Bell in early 20th century] that something is Art simply because a supposed expert proclaimed that it is... it is also the source for the notion of Art's purpose as being for the social or tribal usage - that is, whatever the group involved says it is for, that is what Art is considered as being for...

but, as also has been noted, creativity is an act of an individual... it is by its nature a NON-SOCIAL activity... this conflict has been at the heart of artistic endeavor since before recorded history... much of this is because it has only been recently that there has come an understanding of the mind - how it operates, and its importance to the wellbeing of the person, and indeed, its nature... throughout most all of history, it has been considered something mysterious, even tho Aristotle had justly labelled it as the essence of being human... it was much simpler to accept a belief as truth, to let an authority to proclaim what was and what wasn't right - than to contemplate on one's own...

FALSE ALTERNATIVE

one of the prevailing notions around is the one which has emotions pitted against thinking... this is to say the idea that if a work is examined, the emotions of it evaporate... rubbish... a human being is a biological being - meaning that a person is as inherently integrated within itself as is any other biological being... it has to be, else it could not long survive... an emotion, far from being an opposite to reason, is actually a result, a consequence, an effect of a person"s reasoning or lack of... every person has a capacity to emote, and certainly does - as said, it is the consequence of neural organization - but WHAT the particular emotion is expressedtowards is dependent on something else, the degree of use of the rational faculty of the person... since emotions are as such EFFECTUAL relationships, to understand the emotions, a person must be come aware of the reasons underscoring those emotional reactions... otherwise, the artist's result - the rendering - has no choice but to be haphazard and inconsistant, depending on the degree involved of the awareness of that underscoring reason... why is that? ...it has to do with the fact that reason has two basic functions - cognitive [discovering what things are], and evaluative [discovering the relationship of things to oneself in terms of beneficial or harmful]... what an emotion does is to provide a very quick appraisal of this beneficial/harmful - ness... it is a value-response, a psychosomatic form in which is experienced this beneficial/harmful estimate of some aspect of reality to oneself... furthermore, it is based on the context of the person's knowledge and values [or lack of them] - that is, the reasoning faculty...

WHAT IS THINKING?

thinking is the fundamental aspect of being human... no, not emotions - all the higher animals have emotions, as that is a consequence of neural organization, an enhancement of the pleasure/pain mechanism, a selectivity enhancement that allows more variation to reactions... thinking, being rational, is uniquely sapient, uniquely human, the defining characteristic without which humans simply would not exist - for it is impossible to survive without its use, either personally, or via someone else... noncognitive beings are hardwired such to survive to the extent their perceptualness allows... but cognitiveness requires volitionality, no robotiveness here, and cognitiveness requires self awareness in order to be able to make those choices involved in volition... this does not remove the fact that, like every other living organism, humans have a specific nature by which their survival is optimimly operative - but it does require thinking to discover that nature... that is the beauty and challenge of human life... and the importance of thinking...

THINKING AND SENSE OF LIFE

one of the major problems most persons have is their unknowingness at the true importance of thinking... it is, most often, given the sense that it is a 'necessary evil' which is to be used only when and where it's absolutely having to be... otherwise it's 'on the shelf', and the emotions are given so-called free reign... unfortunately, this does not work for being truly human, for it disavows the very means by which one knows - one's reasoning power, that ability to think... consequently, the sense of life suffers in its integratedness, having gathered within itself a conglomeration of odds and ends which have no bearing on the pro-humanness necessary for creative consistancy... as a result, while an artist can put forth composed scenes to work on, there is a lack of enough focus to make it difficult, if not impossible to understand WHY those scenes were chosen - what it was that made them seem important, at least important enough to bother with the effort of rendering them... along with this is the styling involved, with that same lack of focus parlaying itself into the means by which these scenes are visualized - their clarity, for instance... their color arrangements, for another... even their compositional structuring - the emphasizing of this over that, or from this angle rather than that one, or that one... to fully understand what it is that one is doing when involved in rendering, there must be something more than merely sense of life - it just isn't enough, if great works are to come about...

SENSE OF LIFE

what is a 'sense of life' ?... it is the psychological form in which is expressed the artist's FUNDAMENTAL views of importances, the form in which they're integrated and retained... it is, as such, the emotional response to the way one looks at oneself and how one sees that self relating to the world around... the problem with just using it is that a sense of life doesn't answer 'why'... an emotion is, as Rand pointed out, not a tool of cognition - you don't gain knowledge with it, only an appraisal, which may OR MAY NOT be correct... and having emotions about things without really knowing WHY those particular emotions for those particular things leads to an inability to express the best within the artist... there is a fuzziness and ambiguity involved which dilutes the concentrated effort to creating a great work, as opposed to ordinary or mediocric works... what, then, would be better?

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

one of the problems in dealing with aesthetics is that it is not usually taught as part of art courses... indeed, it seems to usually be frowned upon, and the advice given an artist-to-be is to render as one feels... then there is the turning to techniques as if that basically were all there was to the whole thing - leaving the aspiring person often to flounder in mediocre works for lack of understanding of the fundamentals behind any rendering... composition is the 'order of the day', as it were, with 'scenes' being the most one is expected to do - unless, of course, there is the divulging into propaganda and similar 'message' works... the most a consciencious artist could, then, expect to do in the way of 'more' to the work is to invoke a 'sense of life' about the renderings, and leave it go at that... but while 'sense of life' is a good aid to crystalizing some of the general viewing of what to render, it does not satisfy the one who seeks a full clarity about the works at hand...

THE PRIMACY OF THE INDIVIDUAL

one of the problems in dealing with the issue of aesthetics is that, from the philosophical standpoint, it has been considered the least of the branches of philosophy - this, despite the fact that it is personal, that is to say, individualistic, not tribalistic, and thus really the most important of the sibling offspring of ethics... 'aesthetics [art] is the technology of the soul', Rand wrote...it is, thus, the visualizer of the ethics one holds - what one considers of FUNDAMENTAL importance [both from the artist's standpoint and the viewer's]... the application of ethics by the individual is the primary, from which aggregates of these individuals then proceed to cohabit among each other, thus instituting the politics... of course, this is not the way it has been viewed throughout history, but then history has been largely a run-thru of tribalistic mindsets - until such time as today's age, when maturity is being expressed by the growing recognition that the unit base is the individual, not the tribe... thus is instituting a paradyne shift of the nature of human relationships, indeed, of how to be human in its factual - rational - sense... to know how best the politics, one must know how best the individual - and that is where aesthetics comes in..
'the basic purpose of Art is NOT to teach, but to SHOW - to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe... Since a rational man's ambition is unlimited... he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved... Art gives him that... The pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one's own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one's ideal world.' - Ayn Rand

OPENING SALVO

been wanting to ge something in the way of aesthetic discusions,as well as showing examples to illustrate the aesthetic viewpoint - including a runthru from my to-be-published work, "ETHICS AND AESTHETICS- Origins, Consequences, and Resolutions"...