Remember mid-May earlier this year? When the fear was running high and uncertainty was getting the best of us? The time when supermarkets started running out of baking flour and painting supplies? When suddenly there were countless social media groups sharing complex cooking recipes and art creations of everyone in their family.
This was in a way magical time during the year when the humanity proved again to be more like Woodstock than Wall Street. Did anyone expect it? No way! But somehow it seemed natural when we all started doing it.
So why did we, lawyers and accountants, have turned to creativity during the most uncertain times? Well first, we didn't have have much to do being locked down at home. So a lot of us went on a journey inward and to our surprise what we have discovered within was the desire to create. Interestingly, that desire has always been there, we just were too busy to give it a chance to blossom. It appears that during tough times art was a preferred form of expression for humans, even those who never thought they would be doing anything similar to it. So for a moment the world has stopped and got filled with the gifts each of us has been hiding deep inside. That's what art is in its essence. It's a need for expression, it's a journey inward, to learn about ourselves and to become vulnerable enough to face our own fears and insecurities. Art is type of meditation. That's what true artists do when they create and that's why even though we might not logically understand their creations, we can sense the emotion, the feeling and without any explanation we get drawn to the certain works. Art is opposite of logic, art is what reminds us that we, humans, are creators and when one of us creates, another can sense that energy and relate.
That's the way we at the gallery suggest to approach modern contemporary art. With the mind of a child, with curiosity of a first-grader entering the world of studies, with the heart open to your first lover, and with kindness of a compassionate person. We suggest to overcome the fear of not being an "art person" or of not having enough knowledge. We treat art as something highly personal and pleasurable, something we would love to have in our home and not in a storage as an investment piece (although the works of our artists are collector's items). That's when we have the ability to perceive the creation as emotion which it is, the story of the inner journey the artist has "written" on the canvas or molded through stone or clay.
What was even more interesting during the world-wide pause, is the art world opening virtual doors of their institutions to people. We were able to enjoy online museum visits and the sounds of opera. One of our friends being in Mexico has watched English theater plays free of charge which would cost him a significant sum of money during the usual times. We have discovered a new world and a lot of us have enjoyed it.
We suppose, the hope is that these unusual times have shown us that we have the tools necessary to make ourselves feel better and learn about the real person inside of us. That we have learnt to look a little bit differently at a piece of art next time we are at the gallery, knowing that this is not just a paint or a photograph, it's somebody's view of the world, it's their emotion, it's their energy which they couldn't help but to make public as part of their personal journey. And as part of our journey as a collective humanity. As part of being a true artist.