Some of my favourite works of art are difficult to describe. It’s not that they’re technically excellent (although it’s often true that they are). And it’s not that they’re my favourite colours, or subject, either. When I look at some of my favourite works of art, what’s common to all is that there’s a truth in them. A way that they’ve peeled back the veil of trained attention that exists between me and the world and shown me something as it actually is. It reminds me of this passage from Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!”
“The what?” said Richard.
“The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a …”
“Yes,” said Richard, “there was also the small matter of gravity.”
“Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered.” … “You see?” he said dropping his cigarette butt, “They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later.”
The idea that ‘gravity was there to be discovered‘ sits with me all the time.
From a very early age, our attention is honed. From the moment a teacher or parent says to us, “Sit up straight and look at me,” we’re being taught to focus. And focus is useful for so many reasons. But, of course, it also means we miss certain things in the world, like the glaringly obvious gorilla. When our attention is trained on something, the truth of the world as it really is goes missing.
For me, art has become a journey of truth-seeking. To see through the veil of focus and attention to something larger, different, on a grander scale. Like Newton who ‘discovered’ gravity – a thing that was ‘even kept on at weekends’ but took us 1600 or so years to ‘see’ – art making is about searching for the world as it really is, not simply representing a world we think exists.