My sister is a painter. She doesn’t paint professionally. I’ve often wondered why she’s never really given it a go because I think she’s quite good.
One day she was telling me about a business idea she had. She went into great detail about it and when she was done I asked her why she didn’t just sell her paintings.
“Because I want to make something useful. Art isn’t useful,” she said.
That stuck with me for a long time.
Art isn’t useful?
Each of us consumes art every single day of our lives. We listen to music, read stories, see paintings and photography everywhere. If art isn’t useful why is it so prevalent?
The artist fulfills a basic human need for beauty. The earliest humans painted pictures on the walls of caves and made necklaces from shells. They made up stories, played drums, sang, and danced.
We use art to connect with one another, imagine the unknown, express emotion, capture a moment in time. We use art to celebrate and to mourn.
Art is necessary…
Every afternoon I sit at my computer and type out another chapter to the novel I’m working on. No, I’m not curing cancer or coming up with a solution to global warming, but that doesn’t mean that the stories I write aren’t useful. If someone can come home from a stressful day at work, sit down with one of my novels, and relax for a while I’ve done my job. If they can read my book and connect to the characters, wonder what happens next, or be transported to another world, I’ve done my job.
When someone loves a painting so much that they want to hang it on the wall in their living room and see it everyday …
When someone listens to a song over and over again because it expresses the hurt in their heart more then their words ever could …
When a photograph makes you look at world from a new perspective …
When a sculpture makes you stop and take notice …
… art is useful.
… art is necessary.