From Chapter 3: Deeply Seeing

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.
—Oscar Wilde

Most of our days are spent passing by things that we glance over but may barely be able to recall. This kind of looking is necessary for survival—"look both ways before you cross the street"—but it's totally superficial. As we glance at life, we are often wrapped in a tangle of our own thoughts and judgments. This is the normal self-contained state of ego. But what is the difference between merely looking at a thing and actually seeing it? Seeing occurs when our attention is arrested by a person, object, or scene. Our mind stops chattering and pays attention. We see both the shape of the thing and its meaning to us. We are drawn out of our isolated, self-absorbed state. I will never forget the night an emergency call brought me to the scene of an accident, where I saw our car smashed against a tree, totaled. I felt shocked at the fresh oddness of the scene and then a rush of terror prior to discovering that my wife and daughter escaped without serious injuries. Such an encounter with the gripping potential of death and loss of loved ones cuts through many layers of egoic chatter all at once, and appreciation of life and its sweet preciousness overwhelms you. If you love someone, all your eyes open on him or her. Fascination with the beauty of the beloved can quickly deepen to profound levels. When deeply seeing, the object of our contemplation enters our heart and mind directly. In the act of deeply seeing, we transcend the egoic boundaries between the self and the otherness of the world, momentarily merging with the thing seen.

There is a vast difference between looking and seeing—a difference which is fundamental to the artist's experience.
—Ernest W. Watson

Seeing determines every aesthetic decision. First, artists see their subject, which inspires them to create. Then there are the technical aspects of seeing, such as an accurate analysis of the formal relationships that the artist wishes to express. Next comes a critical translation phase, where the art-making hand dialogues with the seeing mind. This dialogue can be a halting argument filled with traps and pitfalls or a harmonious song that flows from the soul of the artist. Frequently it is both. Seeing is also the recognition of meaning.

No wonder that once the art of seeing is lost, Meaning is lost, and all life seems ever more meaningless: "They know not what they do, for they do not see what they look at."
—Frederick Franck

Let us recall Saint Bonaventure's three eyes of knowing: the eye of flesh sees the "outer" realm of material objects; the eye of reason sees symbolically, drawing distinctions and making conceptual relationships; and the mystic eye of contemplation sees the luminous transcendental realms. Artists need to be able to see on each level in order to bring technical beauty, archetypal beauty, and spiritual beauty to their work.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, an Italian philosopher of the thirteenth century, declared that three things are needed for beauty: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance). We will examine these qualities of beauty by considering how artists discover their subject.

When an artist encounters an artistic subject, love opens all his or her eyes. There is a rush of aesthetic pleasure, and something clicks simultaneously on every level. The artist's spiritual eye recognizes the subject as a special aspect of the absolute. The holy presence of the subject's unique beauty is its claritas, or radiance.

Second, the artist scans the subject, seeing now more with the eye of reason, dissecting the relationships of part to part balanced within the forms, appreciating the rhythm of its structure. The eye of reason also begins to see symbolic correspondences between the form and its meaning. This apprehension of formal pattern and content is consonantia, harmony.

Then the eye of flesh distinguishes, draws a boundary line around the form of the subject, separating it from the boundless backdrop of space and time. The subject is recognized as a discrete whole and is brought into a material form. This is integritas, wholeness.

The artist's three eyes of knowing are inspired by the radiant spiritual beauty of the subject, fascinated by the subject's harmonic structure, and motivated to express the unique wholeness of the subject by drawing a bounding line around it. The levels of seeing that inspire an artist to create are retraced during a viewer's response to an art object. In order to see the object deeply, the viewer must first distinguish it from the field of many material objects, then, fixing the attention on that one thing, the viewer senses its rhythms and harmonies both formally and conceptually, leading to complex and subtle sensations of pleasure mixed with awe as the unique spiritual radiance of the art and its subject are appreciated.

To see deeply and to understand are different from mere looking or observation. In order to experience art fully viewers must go through a mini ego death by placing themselves in the inspired mind of the artists, who themselves are out of their minds and only acting as channels of creative spirit. Viewers thereby recognize the perfection of the form generated, and by that sympathetic communion, an understanding and a change of mind and heart take place. To understand is to see through the rough image made by the artist's hand and recogize the transcendental archetype that is the empowering source behind the image.

"Depth perception" is the ability of the mind to understand visual space by recognizing certain cues. Overlapping, size differences, degree of focus, and perspective are all ways that the mind perceives depth and space. The soul has its own sense of depth perception. Each blade of grass can be a mirror of the absolute when seen with the eye of contemplation.

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
—William Blake

An artist's finest works can symbolically unveil depth upon depth of meaning, like mirrors reflecting each other, deepening endlessly. In order to bring forth their most profound work, artists need to be sensitive to and courageous about their own creative process.

There are many stages in the creative process. Several scientists have attempted to outline the mysterious phases of creativity. Below is my adaptation of their findings.

The Creative Process
1. Formulation: discovery of the artist's subject or problem.
2. Saturation: a period of intense research on the subject or problem.
3. Incubation: letting the unconscious sift the information and develop a response.
4. Inspiration: a flash of one's own unique solution to the problem.
5. Translation: bringing the internal solution to outer form.
6. Integration: sharing the creative answer with the world and getting feedback.

Not all artists will recognize each phase in their work, and each phase takes its own time, widely varying from work to work. The first stage is the discovery of a problem. This is the most important question for an artist, "What is my subject?" The formulation of the problem arises from the artist's worldview and may set the stage for an entire life's work, if the problem is sufficiently broad. The problem is the "well" dug to reveal the source, the vision, the creative matrix of questions and obsessions that drive the artist. Solving the aesthetic problem becomes the artist's mission.