Novelist Willa Cather once said that “art is a matter of enjoyment through the five senses. Unless you can see the beauty all around you everywhere, and enjoy it, you can never comprehend art… aesthetic appreciation begins with the morning bath.”
I suspect Cather would have cared not a jot whether I agreed with her, but for the record, I do and wholeheartedly so.
Art is about appreciating your experiences.
It’s about seeing the beauty and wonder of what’s all around you at every moment. It’s not whether you can write the most beautiful words or capture the most perfect melody. It’s not some unattainable mystery that belongs to someone else.
Call it what you will — art or creativity or spark — it belongs to you as much as anyone, and , if you take a look around, you’ll see that you’re absolutely swimming in it.
Art is waiting to be plucked from the wind-whipped trees and the stinky seaweed piled up on the shoreline.
It’s coiled up in the laundry basket and tangled in your unmade sheets.
Art is carried in on the evening breeze and set adrift on the bubbles in the bathtub.
Life is made of art, if only you’re willing to notice it.
So go and be in the art all around you this weekend. Lie in some grass and smell what that art is like. Watch the sky change and see that art in motion.
Breathe it deep down into your body, and bring it back with you, to absorb and make into some art of your own.
Art In The Bath
