Gisela Beckius 'Art and communication

'Louise Reading' pastel painted about 8 years ago

I am often asked if it’s hard to let go of a painting when it is sold. The answer is quite honestly ‘no’. Though many believe that art is a form of self expression, I think  that in it’s most powerful and life affirming state that it is a form of communication. The art is incomplete until someone else experiences it and something very special happens when people react to the art in a real space and  are able make a deep meaningful connection to the work.  Those moments are why we do what we do.  Before the spoken or written word, communication between humans was achieved through pictures and though such pictures human language began to develop. We communicate because we need or want to be understood, but communication is on many different levels. We are all too conscious of the physical world and of things, but there are realms of meaning beyond the material that spoken or written language can ‘t touch –  a painting, or any true work of art as in dance or music allows you to go beyond the surface and explore meanings,  emotions  or symbols that can’t always be expressed  with words.   The beauty of a painting is that it’s immediate, you don’t have to spend hours as in reading a book – you walk into a room and you have it.  People hang it on their walls because they like how it looks or how it makes them feel. Maybe it reminds them of something specific or maybe they are being nudged by something in the subconscious that they are unaware of.  It’s all up to audience. Everybody has different life experiences and comes from  different backgrounds and each viewer can receive different messages.   Sometimes they see at once what I am hoping to achieve or can look at my work and  experience something that I didn’t see or even intend which I find absolutely fascinating.  It’s as if they are completing the work with me. Ultimately it is a communication of emotion and values ,  so I feel honoured that someone resonates with the work enough to want to live with it.  I feel understood and validated on a very profound level.

As  Leo Tolstoy says in his essay What is Art ...and it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man's expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based.

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