The Old Art

"The expression of creative skill through a visual medium such as painting or sculpture. The product of such a process; paintings, drawings, and sculpture collectively." - Art as defined in the Oxford English dictionary.

When "Art" first began people wrote on walls in an imitation of nature. As time went on it was the job of most artists to skillfully recreate the beauty of nature using their creativity in the selection of subject matter and the placement of that subject matter. Later there was more of a focus on the medium and style in which the subject matter was placed. It moved from what a photograph for the purpose of documentation does into a new creation by the artist. These new creations reflected the artists opinions, ideals, thoughts their whole world view. Even through the neglect of conveying a message, an artist will still say there is nothing worthy enough to say.

As much fun as it is to give an over simplified, opinionated, narrow view of the whole history of art let's bring it back to one of the first creations, one of the first "art". Genesis 1:26 "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness'". Art is the creation of something. To me it testifies the truth of the verse (Genesis 1:26) everytime an artist does a self portrait. We are God's creation crafted in his image and because we are crafted in his image we do some of the same things. When we create sometimes, it seems natural that we make things after our own image. When a famous painter paints she/he doesn't need to sign his/her work because you know who painted it. Something of the artist is within the style the artist puts a bit of themselves in thier work and they create after thier own image. Look at the work of any artist and we get a glimpse of that person. We don't see the entirety of that person but we do see a part, as discussed earlier thier opinions, ideals, emotions, desires, thoughts, experience and world view.