18. Visuals

We are visual people.  You know who you are.  Artists tend to be more aware, see more, appreciate more, and respond to more than the average person on the street.  Photographers, painters, cinematographers, and illustrators quite simply use their eyes more than others.  Visuals are inspiration, motivation, design, energy, and provide aesthetic companionship.  Yes, companionship, like having a friend, an acquaintance, someone you know, enjoy, and appreciate every single day.  Visuals [and your art] become a relationship, an extension of who you are.

Surround yourself with visuals.  Inundate yourself with what inspires and motivates you.  Great images belong on walls and in well-printed books.  Frame a special, meaningful image, hang it on your wall, light it appropriately.  See it everyday.  Enjoy it everyday, appreciate your personal, intimate exchange.  When meaningful art is on your walls it is like your own private museum, your personal art gallery, to be taken in at any and all times.  Watch your relationship with it deepen over time.  Emotions become stronger, good light becomes even more beautiful, you see more details, appreciate more subtleties, feel more presence and mood over time.

If there is nothing on your walls, you are missing an important exchange that constantly re-invigorates the artist within you.  Blank walls are dead spaces, canvases waiting to be filled, hallow thoughts, unrequited relationships.  Blank walls are empty; empty is nothing.  Nothing is the absence of stimulation, no reason to think, feel, engage, change, or grow.   Empty does not move, and it moves nothing else.  Don’t you want to be “affected” on a daily basis ?  As an artist, don’t you want to be intrigued, lifted up, dropped down, visually assaulted, punched around mentally and emotionally?  Don’t you want to feel as though you have had some kind of artistic experience / exchange every day ?  It can’t be done with blank walls.