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Mr. John Hulsey

Only Human

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Last night, as I began teaching another painting workshop, I wondered again what motivates people to put up hard earned cash and move their bodies across town (sometimes across the country) to take a painting workshop. For the most part, these are not aspiring professionals wanting to hone their skills, but folks with careers in other lines of work. I used to think that painting was just a hobby for them and a group class was a safe bet for some entertainment and relaxation. But now I’m not so sure. I have given it some thought and I believe that there is a deeper, more fundamental motivation that drives us to want to learn to paint.

Artists Sketching in the White Mountains by Winslow Homer
“Artists Sketching in the White Mountains”
by Winslow Homer
We have written before about creativity and the new scientific studies investigating the human impulse to create. It is a fascinating subject precisely because it isn’t well understood, and because in some ways artistic creativity has no practical advantage (that we can see) for our immediate survival. For instance, it takes time and resources to make an object such as an essential tool. To then devote additional time to decorate that tool instead of using it immediately for hunting or preparing food, doesn’t make much sense when food is the priority. In a tribal context, everyone must contribute to the welfare of the whole for the tribe to prosper. So why do we find elaborate and extensive cave paintings made by neolithic hunters from 40,000 years ago? These tribes would have had to support those early artists – feed them – while they took time to make the paintings. Recently, archaeologists have found carved and decorated tools made by our primitive ancestors which are over 300,000 years old. The impulse to express something from within seems to be a very ancient need.
When I think about what motivates my students to be present, I now believe that it is related to that ancient need to create, apart from the other activities in their lives. There is something essential in the act of creation, or in simply learning to create, that answers this need. I can teach them all sorts of useful and necessary techniques which are helpful in the long run. But in the moment, which is all we really have, I try to keep in mind that if I fail to connect to the real reason they are present, then I probably have failed to connect with them at the most universal, fundamental level. It is love of creation that brings us together at these moments, and in that, we are all one big tribe.

John Hulsey PBS Interview

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source:ninenet.org Thanks to John Hulsey for permission to use this content.

Artist John Hulsey demonstrates the art of plein aire painting as he paints the bluffs along the Missouri River. Eighth generation Floridian and environmental photojournalist Carlton Ward uses his talent to protect he natural habitat he loves. Stephanie Rond is a painter, curator, and local leader in social justice from Columbus, Ohio. The Art Car Parade of Houston, Texas.

Perception

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We are currently reading two fascinating books about human development and the evolution of art: The Social Conquest of Earth by E. O. Wilson and The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric R. Kandel. While each author offers different but mutually supportive discussions on the rise of perception, self image and cultural myth-making, they are both sharing with us different aspects of the latest scientific discoveries in the fields of human development and cognition.
Mystics have told us for centuries that what most of us experience as life is an illusion. They assert that we do not see life as it is. Rather, we impose our biased interpretations on everything that touches us and that our particular, personal vision guides our actions and reactions.
Recent research by cognitive scientists has also determined that our brains are wired to deduce general, global patterns from whatever limited, local information we can gather and then to try to form a reliable, predictive pattern or picture of the world from which we can operate. This ability to think in the abstract is a sign of higher intelligence, and is at the very root of art-making. Furthermore, we each tend to assign high value to those random events which seem to support a view or pattern which pleases us and a low value to everything else. In essence, we are seeing through personal-colored lenses.
Because the whole is too large for us to see well normally, we have evolved to operate with this illusion of certainty, each forming our own unique view of the world. Our deviations from each other’s views may be slight, or they may be great. We all accept and share certain facts about the largest phenomena in common, like gravity, the seasons, orbits of the planets, and so on. However, there are an innumerable amount of details about the world that we individually may not agree upon, that are open to interpretation. Enter the Shaman, the mystic and the artist.


So, if life is partly an illusion, what does that mean for the visual artist? Number one is good news – since everyone has a slightly different perception of the world, each artist, by definition, must create unique work. The trick is to be able to thoroughly tune in to and assign high value to one’s perceptions about the world, and then have the courage to express that unique view in one’s art.
Surprisingly, it is also ambiguity that makes great art. A certain amount of ambiguity in an image allows viewers to participate in the artist’s world-view while simultaneously imposing their own interpretations. Mr. Kandel writes, “The meaning of the image depends on each viewer’s associations and knowledge of the world and of art, and the ability to recall that knowledge and bring it to bear on the particular image.”
When looking at art, our brains are using our pattern-making architecture and our memory to extrapolate familiar, personal associations from the image, and in a sense make it part of our own experience. In this way, great art always possesses the potential to become a unique experience for each person.

Creativity

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"Fall in the Moraine" by John Hulsey - 18 x 24" Oil
“Fall in the Moraine” by John Hulsey – 18 x 24″ Oil
Second only to language in the hierarchy of advanced survival skills must be the ability to imagine something that does not yet exist, and then make that dream into something solid and real. Just look around you as you read this, and try to find something in your house or office that at one time was not just a dream in somebody’s head. Barring plants, minerals and those things of the earth itself, everything around us is the product of a creative imagination at work. This ability is apparently blown into all of us at birth, is sometimes called abstract reasoning outside of the art field, but nevertheless is the same thing. Businesses could not survive without it and everyone probably engages in small acts of creativity everyday without being aware of it. It is a skill which can be used as a force for good or for evil with equal efficiency, but history suggests that the positive use of creativity is the natural order of things.
"Chiaroscuro" by John Hulsey - 30" x 40" Oil
“Chiaroscuro” by John Hulsey – 30″ x 40″ Oil
We are born dreamers, and we have the power to direct our dreams to create a world to our liking. Throughout history, for good or bad, the most successful people have always been those individuals who realized this power and used it fearlessly to create a new world which never existed before. The late Steve Jobs is but one example of the contemporary dreamers who used this ability to turn their private dreams into a world-changing reality. He did this even when those around him often claimed the task was impossible.
"On the River" by John Hulsey - 18" x 24" Oil
“On the River” by John Hulsey – 18″ x 24″ Oil
So it is with artists and creative people of all stripes. Creating something that never existed before, even if it is only within our own personal world, is our job description. It is our reason for being and we believe that by sharing our efforts publicly, we serve the greater good, despite cultural and economic signals to the contrary. Economic support for what we do is useful, but not a measure of the value of our ideas. Historically, culture often lags behind the ideas and efforts of the artistic community. How could it not? Ideas move at two hundred miles an hour across the synapses of the brain, and giving physical form to our ideas need not take long. The key for all of us is to keep dreaming and imagining and believing in our vision, no matter what. We are the privileged ones, whose daring role it is to look at the disparate parts of the world and “connect the dots” into a new creation. This takes some courage, and discipline. Fear is the enemy, and fear is the only force that can limit, and sometimes kill, creativity. We cannot allow fears of criticism or failure or economic losses to enter our studios and interfere with our creativity. We must carve out a sacred space or time within which we can be temporarily free of these fears and concerns, so that our imagination can be free to wander and dream. We have found meditation to be a powerful tool for sweeping the mental clutter into the corner so that we can walk around in our imaginations. Our art has improved because of this discipline. It is always the first 30 minutes of any day.