Aesthetic Moment: Mind and Soul

Featured Image: Big Pine and Chickadee

It is with our souls and spirits, where we experience the “ah” of aesthetics. It is where we experience that beautiful thing that makes us pause and tells us what we are sensing.  It is with our minds that we formulate an idea or a conception and we recognize our perceptions. It is from these conceptions that we create where our values come from.  We always need to have the freedom to choose our values and what is important in our lives and in our characters.  Our souls and our minds are two very different things.  Our souls do not have free will, they merely roam –  freedom happens within our minds. These creations come from our aesthetics, our souls, our spirits.  We need both – not either or. 

Integration of the soul with the mind happens through the process of taking the abstractions of the soul and the mind's concept; formation does not happen automatically nor is it instinctive.  It involves thinking, and reason.

I think of my art as, in part, an effort to nurture that which is the best in me.  I want those places of my soul to gradually take over my life, and the concepts I create and think about to direct my life and how I live and react to things in my life.  If I succeed, my work is much more wonderful than I could ever be, much more glorious than I could ever be.  The challenge of expressing, through my work, my loves, philosophies and experiences are the challenges and inspirations of my life and work.