Introduction
It has been a long time since I have thought on the idea of writing a book on Art. The more time I spent thinking about it the more complex my thoughts became, so much so I was immediately gripped by the futility of it. Yet I persisted in weighing its importance to my life, how it has changed and given to it a vitality and sobriety I would never have known without it. Art has launched me on a fascinating journey across a vast sea whose horizons seem endless, within whose scope I feel is my Odyssey.
Through it I have wandered into the murky waters of despair self seeking and obsessed, as if what I was discovering was a Biblical revelation of man’s upward thrust into the light and into the truth. All this through an activity which has enforced itself upon me to see not only people as they are but the human being in the context of time.
I feel as Odysseus himself set on a course upon forbidden shores where reality is perceived by the very soul yearning, stumbling, reaching forward into an illusive world strange and unfamiliar, exotic in its beauty and horrifying in its tenacity.
There have been times when I have clung to Art conspicuously, using it as a shield against my fears and as excuse for my excesses. At other moments I have cursed it for its fickle nature, the demands it makes, and the weight it imposes on my life, on my loves and wants. It is at those moments I have been tempted to abandon it, preferably never to have known it. To be normal in the sense of not feeling fated to forego a somewhat undesirable task blind folded from the beginning. Yet it remains merciless in its grip on the artist. The spirit of Art can’t exist without him, this of course whether it is to follow an idea or search for the perfect form in a beautiful image. In this sense Art becomes a responsibility to the human mind and its evolution.
