10 Things I Love About Being An Artist, #9

The Ability to Communicate on a Profound Level

Last night I was privileged to see Kim Moss’s work for the first time. He is a painter newly arrived to my little village of Truchas, New Mexico. And, as such, he is experiencing this place for the first time; he is walking the land grant that I walk every day, an old friend to me, a new one to him.

I stood before his easel and saw the canyon that backs up my land. I felt its solitude, heard its silence. I told him that he has painted my experience better than I have, and it’s true. I saw in his work the way I feel about this place. His paintings are like a quiet walk at night, out in the snow, lit only by starlight or the whisper of a waning moon. And they are powerful in their silence; full of life’s yearning, palpably so.

This is the thing that being an artist gives us: this ability to communicate with brush and paint, a stone carver’s tools, or a typewriter, more than the stuff of words. As artists we give voice to the intangible—a breath of spirit, a resonance of the best that being human has to offer. We pour our hearts out in our work, giving context to the human experience that binds us all. Every expression unique, each perspective viable.

We strain, as artists, to tell it better, to capture the innuendo of walking on this earth. Never stated adequately enough, we continue to reach and strive.

But there are glimmers, there are times, when what we do touches another. Like Kim’s paintings. In them I see myself, standing rooted to the ground, deep in a canyon in New Mexico. A hundred years from now someone else will stand before this same painting and see me there, see him there—the old ones who went before, having left their mark, one directly, one indirectly. What besides art can give us that?

Love to you all,
Jeane

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