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If you are a paid member (either through FASO or BoldBrush Circle here on Substack), come see the latest ideas from us and our community in the BoldBrush Circle of Marketing community here: https://marketing.faso.com. We encourage you to join us and become a paid member today here. How Art Heals through Transcendent BeautyArt shares the universal healing nonverbal gospel
This article originally appeared on my personal Substack, Clinsightshere. I have added, edited, clarified and expanded the original post for publication here in The BoldBrush Letter. Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from the original post. You can always read the entire post here. We are sharing this essay in The BoldBrush Letter because the underlying idea applies to all artists. Please enjoy. Have you ever cried while listening to music? Or while viewing a painting? Have you ever seen someone weeping uncontrollably after being moved by a piece of visual Art? I certainly have. I just talked with a young man yesterday who shared with me that he was moved to tears, for nearly an hour, as he stood in front of a painting that reminded him of his grandparents. He reflected upon all that they had suffered and worked for, to build a life for his parents and himself. Art is meant to heal and redeem us. One way Art heals is by triggering suppressed emotions, dis-ease, that our body needs to release to heal itself. On the one hand, Art can help heal the body, on the other hand it strengthens and grows the soul. True Art depicts true beauty: transcendent beauty. I speak not mere attractiveness, but beauty, the aesthetic equivalent of goodness and truth. Attractiveness, “prettiness,” is something that draws you, that attracts you, it is something you want to possess. Beauty, however, is something that possesses you. You don't and can’t possess it, but you feel the momentary pleasure of being possessed. When you revel in beauty’s poetic thrall, you can’t help but delight in being momentarily cradled within the hand of God. Beauty is pleasurable, and sometimes fear inducing, because it is God calling to us. We are evolved to feel it and it feels good unless we've shunned it; unless we've encased our heart in trauma that is built up by turning away from the healing power of virtue. In the case where we’ve attempted to wall off virtue, we keep ourselves in hell, and the virtuous arts — Beauty, Truth, and Goodness — burn through the scar tissue around our hearts by creating wonder, a divine wound that creates cracks through which the light can flood into us, once again. “The wound is the place where the light enters you” – Rumi When we've trapped ourselves in hell, even God's light — especially God’s light — is painful, just as cutting away damaged scar tissue is painful, but necessary if we wish to heal. Thus, Art exists to lead us to Truth, Wisdom, and a love of Creation, which is one step away from the love of God, even if one doesn’t believe in God. Belief isn’t what brings one to God; for God is experienced. Our art is a divine gift for God and others. In this sense, “art” that doesn’t trigger this is mere propaganda or kitsch and isn’t strictly true Art. This healing effect of True Art is one reason that Art depicting sadness or violence can be cathartic. It still depicts Truth and a kind of longing for beauty. In such pieces we keenly feel Beauty’s absence and our soul weeps in sympathy. For a moment our compassion swells and we weep for the world. There may be anger, guilt, anxiousness and other emotions of disease causing dis-ease repressed in your body that come flooding out when your mirror neurons are triggered while perceiving Art (a movie, a painting, a song, a poem, a novel, etc). In a very real sense, when creating True Art, you are sharing a kind of non-verbal gospel, The God Spell, that contains the power to awaken your soul and the souls of others. And often, the non-verbal message is far more powerful and effective than the verbal one. “A single smile of Beauty can bring about greater transformations of character than all the frowns of Righteousness.” — Sangharakshita FASO Loves Noah Buchanan’s PaintingsSee More of Noah Buchanan’s Paintings Here Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?As you can see, at FASO, we actually do, and, Click the button below to start working Get Started with FASO for Free Referenced PostsThe Healing Virtue of the Virtuoso No AI Zone: Everything written in this post (and all my posts) is written 100% by me, Clint “Clintavo” Watson, a flesh and blood human seeking to grow my soul and come home my truest self; for that is the essence of creativity. I do not use AI to assist me with writing — that would deny me the very growth of my world through writing that I seek. I only rarely use AI images with my (non-AI) writing. On the rare occasions I do use an AI image (usually fiction), I also feature at least one artwork by a human artist with image credits and links to their work or, if I can’t find a suitable image, I donate a free month of website service to one of our artist customers at my SaaS company, FASO Artist Websites. Poetic expression, spiritual ideas, and musings upon beauty, truth and goodness should be free to spread far and wide. Hence, I have not paywalled the work on Reflections of the Sovereign Artist. However, if you’re able to become a paid subscriber, I’d be eternally grateful. It would help, encourage and enable me to continue exploring these topics and allow me to keep it accessible for a world that is in desperate need of beauty, truth, goodness and love. — Creatively, Clintavo. You're currently a free subscriber to BoldBrush. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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