Natural Abstract Art The Nature of Visual Reality
Barrie Dale
wildhaven.co.uk
Our senses tell us what we need to know; they do not tell the truth. What we see is not what is there. If we look at a block of glass, a block of perspex, and a brick, our eyes might tell us that the brick is the one that differs. But perspex is the the exceptional one. Returning to the brick, our senses tell us that it is solid and heavy. These are delusions. A brick consists almost entirely of empty space, and it appears heavy only because the rest of the universe is clinging on to it. When Huxley dosed himself with mescalin, all the ‘gatekeepers’ in his brain were disabled, and his perception changed completely - he saw more vividly and profoundly, so much so that he would have been incapable of mundane everyday tasks. The drug was enhancing the ‘intensity of his experience’. Our senses, under the control of our brains, deceive us about what is really there. Do artists paint what they see? Stone-Age artists were at one with Nature. They produced drawings and sculptures of the creatures around them, from a deep, intimate, knowledge and understanding. Their work was fluent, exuberant, energetic. But they often used abstraction to emphasise the ‘Intensity of their Experience’. They almost certainly ‘saw’ the emphasised image. When Turner was painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’, he was not painting a steam engine; he was painting the idea of a steam engine. You might argue that his image told you more about steam engines than you would gain from looking at an actual steam engine.
Rain, Steam and Speed. JMW Turner. National Gallery, London