Experiencing the Sublime

Inspired by Soul (Pixar) + Alice and Martin Provensen.

This is the tenth installment in my series, The Art of Wisdom, a study of art from the world’s wisdom traditions.

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Left: Artwork from The Golden Bible New Testament, 1953, by Alice and Martin Provensen. Right: My version!

Welp, it took ten essays of wandering around, but I finally feel like I’m zeroing in on a more solid direction for this series. In my last Art of Wisdom essay, I wrote about the possibility that developing an artistic way of seeing the world is the whole point of making art. That with each drawing, painting, song, or whatever piece of art we make, we are in the process of becoming.

But as always, these kinds of questions don’t lead to answers—they just lead to deeper questions. So I had a new thread to follow: If we artists are in the process of becoming… well, what is it that we’re becoming?

I’ve been thinking and writing about what I call the Artistic Mindset for years now. So I can easily rattle off the many beneficial qualities and abilities that artists have or need to have to make art: the ability to slow down and quiet the mind, to be receptive to new ideas, to be willing to experiment through trial and error; to be comfortable with the unknown, to have the desire to communicate something, to be able to trust your intuition and follow your gut, to hold on to a sense of wonder and curiosity and let it be your compass, and to know how to reconnect your mind, hands, and heart to work in tandem together.

Utilizing that artistic mindset allows us to listen to the artwork and what it wants (not what we want) and steward that into being. We have to drop out of ourselves, get our ego/identity/wants/desires/wishes/doubts/fears/aversions/etc out of the way, tap into something so much bigger than our tiny human problems, and allow the artwork to manifest itself on the page.

Some illustrations I’ve made over the years, trying to capture the feeling of the creative experience.

In other words: every time we create a piece of art, we practice dropping out of ourselves and we experience falling into something bigger. We transcend our normal daily life and zoom out to something beyond. We experience the sublime.

Maybe I’ve lost you. Maybe you’re saying, “Whoa, Christine’s gone totally woo-woo, no thanks.” And I get it. I would have lost myself here, reading this, even just a year ago. But stay with me for a moment: try to think of how you feel when you’re totally in the zone, creating a piece of art.

What does that feel like? How would you describe that sensation of being totally caught up in the creation of something new? Those moments when the marks on the page flow seamlessly out of your pen, the artwork seems to make itself, and everything just works and feels right and good?

This clip from the Pixar movie Soul, about a jazz musician, perfectly captures that feeling of transcendence during the creative process:

That, that, THAT! That’s what I’m talking about!

In the scene, when Joe plays the piano—after he lets go of his doubts and fears and drops out of himself—he closes his eyes and goes… somewhere else. He’s no longer sitting in a jazz club in New York surrounded by other people. He enters another realm of existence, another plane of reality, another level of consciousness. I know that sounds grandiose, and woo-woo, and totally whack! But I just don’t know how else to express it in words. How would you?

So now, so now, so now. One question leads to the next: if we go somewhere else when we are totally immersed in the creative process…

…where is it that we go?

Thanks for reading! I got more drawin’ and thinkin’ to do!

<3,
Christine