I argue that art is what we make it. It cannot be defined in simplistic notions of paintings or sculpture because even collections of numbers can be art in their own way.
What matters is the way we create it.
I recently visited the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, its rooms filled with the sketched and blurred faces of hundreds of artists, philosophers, writers, musicians, monarchs, soldiers and everyday people. In this time capsule of faces, the histories and lives that intersected to create these paintings were immortalised in this 200-year-old, rustic, red-bricked building.
Each room was characterised by its colourfully painted walls; a background to the art hung around the space, each gallery representing a colourful ode to a past time period of equal parts peace, turmoil, and revolution. Aspects of war mingled with innovation, political upheaval and migration. It reminded me of the sheer volume of humanity we possess that we record in such an expressive way, and as such, cement it in portrait form.
It may just be a way to record history before the invention of the photographic lens, but it’s more than that. It records with it the styles that characterised that time, the brush-strokes, the colours only afforded to the wealthy and the success of individuals in creating their first painting. How many were forgotten to us because they weren’t born into a family or profession that could grant them an artistic legacy? How many slipped away into the backgrounds of crowded markets in paintings depicting a prominent figure or devastating battle? Did they dream of becoming painters and artists too, of creating visual representations of their humanity for future inhabitants to remember?
Sir David Wilkie’s portrait is a window into the artist’s impression of himself. It was important to his legacy’s survival that it was painted, and therefore that he was remembered for his paintings of everyday people of all classes as well as the Middle Eastern influences and subjects that defined his later years as an artist. He became known as the “people’s painter” as he championed the ordinary people, the ones without the chance to create an artistic legacy. To survive through art for longer.
So why is art important to our survival now?
I know the wording seems extreme, but in a time where AI threatens our very ability to think creatively or take our originality away from us, if we are to create in the world, recognising the importance of art and creating art will become our best-kept tool for the future.
The light in a Turner painting on the waters of a harbour or the bright hues of Van Gogh’s ‘Almond Blossom’ cannot be erased or recreated by a machine without a capacity for emotion. This is the fundamental basis behind art. Our ability to feel.
As someone who struggles with feeling and making sense of feelings daily that threaten to bankrupt my experiences in favour of fear and anxiety, I still would choose to feel over the alternative. Feeling is the purest form of our expression and the basis for our creative impulses.
Although this does not mean that painting and sculpture are the only methods by which to be creative.
Art is what you make it. The important thing remains that we continue to make it. Because only we can, and it is important to create art to better understand ourselves.
With the increasing frequency of our engagement with the digital world and with shorter attention spans and quick dopamine fixes, we must strive to slow our minds and create something else. Something that taps into that emotional centre so many of us keep hidden. Ignoring it only seeks to distance us further from ourselves and our emotions, which is the opposite of living a worthwhile existence.
I know there’s no perfect method, and I’m aware that I, too, am prone to doomscrolling when things get too hard, but the act of striving to understand your insides can start with embracing art in its creation or even just its observation.
That’s how it will save us.
It reminds us of our humanity in ways we are still trying to understand, even after centuries of Greeks, Romans, Indigenous Peoples and the likes of Van Gogh, Turner and Wilkie creating art to remember their humanity by and therefore remind others.
Part of being human is found in the beauty of not knowing things, even when AI gives us easy access to knowing everything. We must preserve the part inside ourselves that seeks to keep learning, keep growing, keep creating.
As I walked into the fresh spring air of a May morning in Edinburgh after 3 hours of wandering through history inside the National Portrait Gallery, I was overwhelmed not with inspiration but with acceptance.
Art has always been there to remind us of the beauty of human emotion and the capacity we have for creativity, but also the histories we must learn from. Art will continue to be created long after we are gone, but how we are remembered will depend on how we create it.
I want to be remembered for creating hope and truth in an era where both are constantly under question. At least, though, I will know that I created it. It came from me and therefore represents a part of my humanity, and I’m not sure there’s anything more truthful than that pursuit.
For Wanderers and Wonderers 