The Art of Letting Go

The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. — Wikipedia



A Moment of Passing

A while back, Alyssa Monks shared moving insights in her TEDx Talk on art. She talked about how she tried another painting style set in nature, to rekindle her flame after her mother’s passing.

It
gave me pause to reflect on creative writing as another act of art that
penetrates the unknown. Specifically, it conveys the importance of allowing
life to freely grace itself into the work. Letting nature’s truths on creation
and death, on love and loss, reveal themselves in a more pure, unvarnished way.

[image error]Haunted Forest

Alyssa‘s gentle message spoke to me about releasing tight control that hinders spontaneous revelation in art. This allows the unmasking of subtle layers that simmer with inspiration and timelessness below illusory, complex surfaces.

Letting Go

By letting go more, an artist can allow life’s creative form to openly reveal its depth and beauty, its fragility and impermanence, without imposing undue judgment or guardrails.

It
becomes an act of fearlessness and kneeling humility, with hope to catch a
glint of loving compassion in infinity’s eye.

These
notions have been sketched in my mind over time. However, the mind never calms
itself enough to let the heart take hold and carry the message. So, a crucial
part of the larger whole gets lost in the act of art.

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When
emptying hardened conceptions and using childlike eyes, otherworldly spirits of
clarity can take flight in one’s soul to enable sight beyond sight. To restore
wholeness in artistic expression is to allow oneself to melt into the fearful,
formless immensity of otherness and the divine.

The Visual Art

Visual
art, as with paintings or drawings, has its special gift of weaving insights
more directly and viscerally. It bypasses the rigid sifts of mental prisms, enriching
one’s intuitional grasp of the deeper human experience.

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The
techniques this emboldens for discovery of the profound and the esoteric can
then translate to other forms of interrogative art, as with writing. Harmonized
modes of artistic expression, grounded on reverence for the naked truths and
imperfections of life, can lead to personal growth and authenticity.

Life as Art

As
life imitates and then transcends art, these insights extend to how we learn to
let go in our daily living. Ideally, we transform each small action of the day into
an act of art unto itself.

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In so doing, the myriad aspects of truth, as beautiful or as sorrowful as those may be, can surface to deepen our empathy and unflinching embrace of life’s raw message. We then become empowered with eyes of wisdom that see beyond the veil of death and time.

Christopher
Pufall