The Art of Life

Here are a few reflections after watching The Art of Life – the 2017 documentary about artist David Lynch by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm.

Artists. Must they always be so filled with angst? Is so-called “good art” to be created exclusively by vexed souls that sit in the dark and stare blankly into the distance? Are laudable artists only those creative types whose fragmented, tortured thoughts are interrupted only by the irrepressible and inexplicable urge to express themselves in a twisted aesthetic? Does a person somehow become an artist when they fit David Lynch’s definition: “You drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, that’s it”?

I humbly, respectfully, yet confidently say, “No!” The image of the disturbed artist as an exalted norm is misplaced at best and deeply harmful at worst. It’s powerful, too, carrying with it a mystique that sets artists in a strange yet intriguing world that’s inaccessible to the average Joe. It’s the kind of mystique that causes people to whisper in reverent tones, “Hey look… over there… it’s an artist.”

Perhaps this angsty, dark, mysterious persona comes from a larger culture that clearly has an insatiable appetite for what’s lost, maligned, and decrepit. Even a casual scroll through the latest Netflix offerings reveal this love affair with darkness. On the other side of the cultural coin, perhaps exalting the “troubled, brooding artist” stereotype is just another symptom of a culture that’s lost its way… that’s lived so long in the shadows that it can’t even imagine things like beauty, wholeness, redemption, goodness, and grace.

It is precisely because of the consuming nature of darkness and its effects upon the human heart that beauty-captivated artists are so essential. A world dying of aesthetic emphysema doesn’t need more artists offering a paint brush that’s really a cigarette. It needs those who gently invite the world into the bright, open spaces filled with aesthetic fresh air and the wondrous, soul-lifting aromas of artistic lavender, eucalyptus, rose petals, and such. This world needs - whether it says so or not - artists who effuse light not darkness, beauty not ugliness, redemption not rebellion. Real, not naïve, souls, that ply the wood, clay, paint, film, and other media with faith and hope and bright, life-giving love.

Let’s bring the stereotypical, laudable artist’s persona out of the darkness, shall we? Let’s shed the shadows and smoke and hopelessness. And let’s do this without losing the darker hues of our stories and the important part they play in our lives and aesthetics. Let’s just not let those darker threads become our entire aesthetic! Instead, let’s shower our souls, and the artists who feed them, with beauty, wholeness, redemption, goodness, and grace.

This is the artist that I long to be… an artist who dwells in the light and who lets that light shine through me and my artwork to brighten and heal the world. How might you join me in this quest in your own creative endeavors?