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Annemagreet Kuiper - Mini-essay 1: Creating and experiencing art

Creating and experiencing art 



Where does art come from?
This question keeps challenging me.
If I didn't go on trying to find my own answer, all I could do would be to copy other people's.

For me art starts in the mind's folds.
What is hidden there, wants to come to light.
The creative process reveals what is unconscious and thus helps to raise consciousness.
It helps if we understand that creation is inevitably tied up with letting go.

Everything we can see, hear and feel was once energy that has now become form.
This coming to light of what was hidden I experience as a connection with the mysterious force that wants to create and that wants to see if what is created is good and gives joy.

Perfect art I see in nature: the process of creating and letting go.
People try to be co-creators in nature. They help nature through sowing, planting trees, diverting rivers, irrigation and building bridges. Whether this takes place in the world within them or outside them, it always goes hand in hand with the letting go of old forms to enable new ones to come into existence.
Through knowledge, the heritage of works of art, buildings, stories and craftmanship,
this process of transformation is passed on to new generations.

When I can give a poem or paintwork the shape it wanted to take, I feel in tune with something seeking to find form.
The process of starting over and over again and the rearranging of it all again until everything has finally found its proper place, connects me with the creative urge. I feel grateful for this creative urge that transforms the sorrow of having to let go and at the same time brings joy through giving shape to what was looking for light in the mind's folds.

To experience this connection in the work of other artists gladdens and moves me and brings recognition.
The uniqueness that goes on expressing itself in any art form, I experience as communication with the Unseen that wants to find voice through and for every human being.

The work of art functions as a bridge between man and mystery for both artist and viewer alike.
The bridge that gives access to consciousness.


Translated by Olga van Trigt
from www.annemagreet.nl
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