I recently went to the Cass Sculpture Foundation and I realised something.
I don’t understand art.
PHEW.
There.
I FINALLY admitted it.
I think I had a tough introduction to art, to be fair.
My teachers at school were very simplistic, which to a 14 year old chronic over-thinker wasn’t the best match.
I never learnt that art was a process of expressing emotions creatively.
I aways thought it was just something that was.
So I never learnt to embrace the redirections that my pieces took, and instead I viewed them as wrong.
As errors.
As incomplete.
I can’t even begin to recount how many creative pieces I have thrown away over the years.
I can’t tell you how many trees I have personally ruined with my excessive use of paper because so many of my drawings were torn apart by my overuse of an eraser.
I can’t tell you how many colourful pictures were surrounded by colourful language as I expressed my frustration that the colours kept merging together because I had painted a bit I wasn’t supposed to and my impatience to fix it was greater than my ability to see that paintings don’t have to be perfect on the first stroke.
And. Well. Don’t even get me started on the attempt I made in my carpentry class.
But two years ago when I started this blog my entire mindset changed.
My brush strokes and woodwork still leave much to be desired, but I learnt that creativity didn’t have to come from sculpting something with your hands, it could come from creating with them.
I learnt that the blank page that appeared when I clicked “Add New” was my form of a blank canvas.
And so my blog became my expressive outlet.
Filled with an array of arrangements of the 26 letter alphabet.
Just 26 letters that had been shaped, changed, rearranged and dissected to form so many different stories.
26 letters that have shown you my adventures in life and laughter.
26 letters that have shown you the depths of the sea, and the depths of my soul.
But the best part of these 26 letters is using them to write so often has given me the courage to be the person I always wanted to be.
The person who not only went out on adventures but came back with a story to tell.
And so a short while ago I took a trip to the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood.
The Cass Sculpture Foundation is a place I had driven past many a times, but never found the energy to go into.
What if I didn’t get it?
What if I didn’t understand?
What if? What if? What if.
But with a new appreciation of viewing how other people expressed themselves, I knew I had to try.
And so I drove inside the Cass Sculpture Foundation.
Well technically I drove inside the outside of Cass Sculpture Foundation.
The place is massive with sculptures spread out throughout wildly grown but orderly grounds.
And I looked.
And I saw.
And I created stories.
And I interacted.
And I learnt that what I saw and what the curator felt were two very different things.
And I understood.
Art isn’t a language that shouts at you.
It isn’t a puzzle waiting to be solved.
Because there is no answer.
There is no right or wrong way to feel.
Art is simply something that captures your attention long enough to make you question something.
And I realised.
You don’t have to ‘get’ art.
You just have to appreciate the courage it took for the creator to share their soul with you.
Because it doesn’t matter if you work with words, paints or clay.
Sharing your self with the world, is the single scariest scary thing.
