Theorist or Practitioner?

Recently I started a new job in arts administration at a regional gallery. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to find such similarities between the art world and the church world.

The first thing everyone asks me on the job is, "What is your background in the arts?" or, "Are you an artist?" Because people like to pigeon-hole with definitions, I like to throw a spanner in their works. The conversation goes a little like this:

"I'm a creative, I tell them. I create because I have to. For me it puts the capital L in life.
So yes, I’m an artist : I create visual art with paint, pastels, charcoal.
Yes, I’m a writer : I create stories, express statements and build dreams by stringing words together.
Yes, I’m a graphic designer : I create communication and marketing materials.
But my real passion is helping others tap into their own creative talents. Thus discovering their truest, best self. Imagine if we were all our truest, best selves, I enthuse. The world would be such a nicer place. So I guess you could say I also like to help create a better world."

At this point in the conversation they usually give me a strange look. To further confuse them, I admit I have no formal education in the technical or political aspects of art. That's when they start to look smug.

Then I add: "But my training in art therapy, and experience in creative coaching, allows me to help others explore the world, and in particular the "soul" aspects of it, through the power of story, art, and creative living."

They usually respond by proceeding to prove their superiority by throwing around some famous artist names, recent exhibitions they attended in Melbourne, or even better, on a recent trip to Paris, Chicago, or London.

"You sound very knowledgeable," I respond. "Are you an artist?" Many of them say no - but take great pains to prove they know their stuff; the theory, the names, the exhibitions to be seen at and the right words to throw around. But they have no artistic or creative practice themselves. They know the head stuff, but have never ventured into the heart stuff.

I can understand their fear. Really, I can. To put creative living into practice takes courage. Turning something theoretical into tangible daily practices is not for the fainthearted. Particularly when there are so many highly educated professionals out there. How dare we even attempt to name ourselves in their terminology.

Michael Leunig has also observed the similarity between the art world and the religious world. He speaks of rainy Sundays spent hushed at the “high altar of art”. Where “the inner sanctum is inhabited by the art priests: the critics, curators and scholars - the upholders and defenders of the faith with high knowledge and deep power; they who interpret the sacred icons and dispense art to the masses, who guard the holy mysteries and sanctify the art; who canonise the saints and glorify their miracles and cast fear into the flock by preaching how damned in philistine hell they will be if they doubt the holy word or fail to kneel before the glory of the old masterpieces . . .”

He further develops the analogy; “Like the traditional church, the institutional art world wields much worldly power and is custodian of great wealth and wisdom, and like the church of old, and in spite of the brilliant individuals of integrity to be found there, it nourishes perversity, accommodates abuses and betrays the spiritual truth of its own origins. Art, like religion, arises from the spirit, but alas, the formalising of spiritual life all too often ends in hypocrisy.”

And therein lies the catch. Unless we personally practice the theories, we are hypocrites to call ourselves creative or christian. The adventure of living the creative christian life begins with answering this question. How can we embody what it means to reflect the image of Someone whose first verbal revelation was, “In the beginning, God created . . .”?

© Kel 2009