The Evolution of Art

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I think there is beauty in the process of creating ritual artwork. The creation process Eck describes is really interesting. The process that for me can become a sort of mindless thing. I mean, art isn't really mindless, even if you find you just paint things that you think are 'pretty.' All throughout high school, my art teacher told us not to do that, but I did anyway and created some meaning behind everything I did. My focus for the entirety of my high school art career was myth and folklore. I painted mythological characters like Daphne (Greek) and Sif (Norse), along with Mexican figures like la Llorona and el Principe Oso. For the most part, I've abandoned the strict structure my teacher showed us: the idea, reference photos, three thumbnail sketches, color studies, then your painting. I have an idea, I start sketching, then I figure the colors out as I go. It's not efficient and it's definitely not a good way to go about traditional artwork, but I'm so happy I'm learning how to create digital art. 

Learning how to create art with structure is so incredibly important so that you can break the rules later. It's one of those things that you hear applied to nearly every discipline, but I feel like it fits best with regard to art. Eck mentions in her book the very strict rules on how to create a representation of the Divine in Hinduism. There are certain mediums that you must use, harvested on certain days, with certain meanings. There is that basic structure that follows every sort of art, but it's combined with the religious significance of what the artist is creating and why. 

When JBK showed us the video on the Durga Puja and brought up how different the creation of the statues of the Goddess was from what was outlined in Eck's novel, I thought of my own process. It's really interesting to see the evolution of art and how people develop their own styles of creating after some time. It takes some skill to develop your own style and find out what works best for it. If the process applies in secular art, I think it's really cool that it transfers over to religious artwork. It's like this really awesome universal understanding of art. 

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