Words or Paintings?

Which would you choose to communicate your ideas and emotions – words or paintings? As a blogger perhaps you think it should be words?

But, words can’t reach our inner most selves as paintings can.   Nor can we easily express in words how or why a particular painting affects us.

Art should not be judged from an aesthetic viewpoint. No, Kupka insisted, fighting for breath (he was dying). It was nothing more nor less than an attempt to communicate.

– Quote about Franz Kupka from The Red Highway                         by  Nicolas Rothwell, p.63.

It’s not “either/or” words or paintings… We need both in our lives. Art inspires and elevates. Art brings people together.

On Saturday in our back yard, we celebrated both – painting and books with our neighbours and friends!

What a splendid way to reach out to others and share beauty! Art is part of life and community. Art is not just for exhibition in galleries and museums.

Through it (art) people communicate to one another their feelings, their most intimate and infinitely varied and poignant thoughts.                                                                                                             -From Dialectical Materialism, Philosophy and Art,                                  by Alexander Spirkin

Have you ever held a neighbourhood art show?

Have you ever attended a neighbourhood art show?

Please comment on your ideas about art, communication and community.

Thanks!

Author: Pamela Collett

I was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. I have a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.Sc. from Cornell University. I have lived and worked in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, California as well as in Washington, DC. Outside the United States, I lived and worked in Venezuela, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Uganda, Somalia and Kenya. I currently live in Canberra, Australia. I edited three books: Bold Plum: with the Guerillas in China's War against Japan by Hsiao Li Lindsay; Peace and Milk: Scenes of Northern Somalia by James Lindsay and Fatima Jibrell; and Solo vale si piensas rápido by Mehedy Lopez, a book of poetry in Spanish. In 2016, I published a book of my poetry and drawings, Silence Spoken. I have taught communication skills, English as a second language, and English for journalists (in Beijing, China) at university and secondary school levels. I was a features writer for the Daily Journal, (Caracas, Venezuela), and The Chronicle of Higher Education. I am a member of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Writers Centre, active in a writers’ group and a contributor to poetry readings, That Poetry Thing, in Canberra, Australia. View all posts by Pamela Collett