By Arthur H. Gunther III
An artist’s painting is in the eye of the beholder, but the language is from the maker, and though the viewer may know some of the words, even sentences, the full narrative is the creator’s. The viewer can miss all of that for lack of interest or simply because you take what you will from any moment.
There is lost opportunity there. So many potentially interesting people are undiscovered because we dismiss them for one reason or another. Sometimes quickly.
That is how we winnow out those who don’t hold interest for us so that we have room for those who do. It’s life.
Ah, but to search below the surface is to discover feelings, views, emotions that can change you. And remove prejudice. And give you adventure.
Back to the metaphor on painting, an adventure I am personally grateful for, a discovery unimaginable in earlier life. In retirement, I morphed from newspaper images, words and design to brush and paint and canvas and a new form of the “who, what, when, where, why and how” that were the guiding pursuit in my old career.
It is in the discovery of the overlooked, the under-mined, the “search below the surface” that has given me a chance to see “lost opportunity.”
This has absolutely nothing to do with artistic skill or gift or the “quality” of the work. It is all about searching. And in that, so much of a goldmine.
The writer is a retired newspaperman reachable at ahgunther@yahoo.com
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