Aliyah Marr: Eye of the Artist

Is the eye of the artist a lens that simply records what it sees like the lens of a camera? How much of what we "see" is due to our filter of experiences and is subject to our emotional/ mental interpretation?

My mother believed that it was the eye that made the artist, that if an eye from an artist were transplanted to another person, that person would be an artist. I always believed otherwise: that it is the mind, and the openness of the mind that makes an artist.

It is a measure of the kind of artist that we both were as to how each of us believed. My mother eschewed meaning in art and was made uncomfortable by any art that carried any overtones of anything other than what was represented.

Of course, now that I have explored the path I have chosen thus far, I know now that it is not the eye that sees. It is not even the lens of the camera of the mind. After all, science has proven that the eye sees more than the camera lens. If only because the eye sees over time and can adjust to minute or major differences in light and focus. What we "see" is a composite image that has to be assembled by the brain. But more than this, we are seeing what we feel as much as, or more than what is actually in front of us.

People who have been blind most of their lives cannot adjust to the information from eyes suddenly restored to vision. Dr. Oliver Sacks once wrote (An Anthropologist on Mars) of a patient whose sight was restored after something like 30 years of blindness. The patient was unable to interpret what he saw, in fact, his brain was not adapted to receive the input from eyes blind since childhood.

Another case study from the same book cited a painter who suddenly lost all sense of color in a freak car accident. The part of his brain that registered color was damaged. Everything looked like a black and white photograph; he was unable to eat because food looked like it was made out of concrete. Although the experience was disturbing to the artist for some time, eventually he adjusted, becoming a sculptor. The man was still an artist because at his core he was an artist. Circumstances simply had changed the type of input, when he adapted to this minor change, he actually preferred the colorless state; offered a chance to have his sense of color restored, he refused.

What an artist actually sees is less important that what he chooses to see.

In fact, it is not even what the artist chooses to see that makes the artist. Once the artist achieves a certain level, like the spiritual guru, the actual input no longer matters; the artist will express what she needs to in the moment. A famous Japanese artist once stated that when he reached 100 years of age, he would have achieved such clarity and skill as an artist that every line would sing.

Aliyah Marr is a multimedia artist, interactive designer, published author, teacher, transformative coach, personal trainer, and motivational speaker. She is the author / artist of the Transformational Tarot.

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