ART CAN CHANGE THE WORLD BY AN ARTIST'S POINT OF VIEW

Art Can Change The World by Margaret Rossiter

What does it mean to say that “art can change the world”? Can it really, or is art just a useful tool for fundraising for worthy projects?   And, more specifically and personally, how does my own art change the world?  Some art is obvious in its activism, confronting social or political concerns directly, and openly advocating for political   change.  Other art changes the world more subtly by inspiring us to be more fully human.

My painting is a spiritual practice akin to meditation.  As a pagan, I see divinity expressing itself in the physical, embodied, natural world.  As an act of devotion, I paint the world as I perceive it, as honestly and directly as I can. I paint the light, the movement of air, the flow of time, of water, and the cycles of growing things.  This is a form of prayer, and a way to nourish spirit

My paintings celebrate rather than challenge.  They arise from love rather than anger.  I sometimes paint from grief, as when I portray a tree or a landscape that I know is dying.  But what my art celebrates above all is life force, the soul of nature.  

My art is also a response to beauty.  I see something that takes my breath away, opens my heart, and moves me.  My humanity is touched and I need to respond by painting to evoke and distil the essence of that moment.  That essence is of being aware of, and connected to, spirit and the web of life.   It is a moment of remembering the best of what I, as a human being, can be.

For the viewer, each painting is a window on some fragment of the web of life; a reminder, on some level, of the Whole of which each of us is but a part.  Each painting is a reflection of the truth that we are all beings embodied on a shared, fragile and beautiful planet.   I hope that these pictures help people, in their daily living, to make choices rooted in life-affirming values.

Paintings that arise from a profound love of “the soul of nature which gives life to the universe” provide refuge from despair and an experience of peace,  beauty, and renewed hope. Thus art and spirit can come together to change individual experience.  Changing individual experience changes the whole.  Art can change the world.