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10/25/2004: "Art and Mythology" by Brad Michael Moore
Art, at its very core, reveals a standard of physical, spiritual, and emotional parameters we all share in as part of the human experience. History plays out a cycle of trials and tribulations common to living today - many ways the same as 100, or 30,000 years ago. Our needs, dreams, and desires, repeat themselves wherever human life has, does, or shall exist. From the cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc to the 'more contemporary' chronicles of Homer, or from our present-day studies of different cultures and their myths and legends, or in modern creative expressions - the struggles we discover are comparable throughout all of humanity's recorded history. There are so many themes centered on survival, or the yearning for approval and acknowledgment from loved ones, peers, and eternal makers… There is the division of uncertainties over our impermanence, and a varied inquisitiveness over a 'hereafter concept' ranging into many assortments of manner. From crude beginnings, we have come to look towards the cosmos, where, there is an assurance that however minute we feel, balanced to the whole of our universe, we each are still a component to the puzzle of this grand existence.
For artists, we must labor earnestly in being responsive to the significance of what we have in common with this history of our species and earth. Our pose is to reinterpret, rephrase, and reinvent those common links, as well as portray any new possibility distinctive to our own time and environ. While we are each unique, in the sum of our individual heritage and experiences, it is the ordinary endeavors repeating themselves, constantly, and fluidly, that bring sincere meaning to our lives, and should be reflected in our art through the light of our individualities. Truisms, wise tales, equilibrium, karma, providence, devotion - art re-illustrates them all over and time again. Just as trees has been, for centuries, worshiped in Indian culture, or how ancient Polynesians believed 'Heaven Father and Earth Mother' were born out of a chaos they called Po, art springs from, and maintains, the heart of imagination and life itself. And so is born mythology - proportioned from diverse points of view to make more clear how we are what we have become. Myth is the coal pit worked by the artesian Greek God Hephaestus; Art is the lotus flower rooted in mud, growing through murky waters to bloom, finally, beneath the sun. Both give points of light echoing reverence to the foundations of humankind and its earth. Our art has consistently nourished the visions addressing our courage and strengths, our failures and character… If the heart of our creative expressions manifest to accurately mirror our own genuineness of soul, and imagination, our toils will convey these associations that bind us together. The symbols of our observations will be reflected by our art and mythos - labored over and destined towards future generations. So, I declare to us all - to imagine visibly, to dream sincerely, be forthright, and bare witness - let our inspired abilities reveal the existing essence of our present and past shared history as it blazes towards the upcoming ages…BMM©2004 - 10/20/2004
