Artist Rob McGowan

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Art is not understood as it should be.

Art is a creative activity that expresses imaginative or technical skill. It produces a product, a tangible. Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, artifacts, and expressing the author's imaginative mind. The product of art is called a work of art, for others to experience. Creation sets us apart it is where everything starts.
We do not always see our best work

Works of art often tell stories. Artists can present narrative in many ways—by using a series of images representing moments in a story, or by selecting a central moment to stand for the whole story. Narrative works often illustrate well-known historical, religious, legendary, or mythic stories. Sometimes, however, artists invent their own stories, leaving the viewer to imagine the narrative. Vincent van Gogh’s unique and instantly recognizable style continues to rise in popularity. With colors inspired by Vermeer, Van Gogh’s paintings are filled with energy, vibrancy and entrancing linework — purposefully employed throughout to direct you back to the focal point. “It’s possible that he sold only one painting in his lifetime his work would have been thought of as armature because he did not paint in the traditional way he was setting the stage. Van Gogh would put one color paint on one side of the brush and another color of paint on the other side of the brush and then apply one stroke to the canvass leaving two colors in a thick impasto style creating a vibration of color that takes your breath away.Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After a year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin exams, calling Latin a "dead language" of poor people, and was subsequently denied entrance. The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: In the winter of 1878, van Gogh volunteered to move to an impoverished coal mine in the south of Belgium, a place where preachers were usually sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the sick, and drew pictures of the miners and their families, who called him "Christ of the Coal Mines." In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Though he had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support van Gogh financially. The point behind my writing this blob is not to show the genus behind Van Gogh we all know that. The point of this story is to point out what made Van Gogh possible. Theo his brother supported Van Gogh and remember he could not sell his paintings.so if it had not been for Theos love and believe in him There would be no starry night. Theo is not revered and did not gain anything by supporting van Gogh but when we give our support our love, we sometimes change the world around us.

Rob McGowan 2022
Plato is wrong - Art tells us what life is

One thought of philosophy is to find the universal in the isolated. To determine what is common among the different, or what is permanent in the changing. The ancient philosopher Heraclitus touches on this concern when he noted that No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. A flowing river never has the same water in it at two different times, nor is it the same shape as it was before. It is in a perpetual state of flux. Nonetheless, we can identify it as a river every time even though it is not the same river from our previous encounter. What makes it possible for us to do this, in a way, is what art is. Art is trying capture the impossible to capture a moment that can never be repeated, or a creation of a moment that will never be duplicated, but is familiar to those who have encountered or felt a similar experience.

Plato says by assuming as a fact there is a world of permanence and perfection beyond our own that gives shape to our fluctuating world. This world he dubbed the world of the Forms. A Form is the perfect example of a thing (the original) in other words, what that thing isindependent of any of its material instances, Plato’s theory has profound repercussions, even if you set aside the many philosophers who have built upon his arguments. The short of it is that Plato is largely hostile toward the arts, viewing them as an obstacle in the pursuit of truth and understanding. If everything we encounter in our world is an inferior copy of an ideal Form within the principles of beauty and artistic taste, then any artistic creation that tries to capture the world and how it came to be, is a copy and inferior. It is not even an image of the truth, but a shadow of that image, distorted by the greater distance of its removal.

I say art is the very nature of interpretation that brings forth the meaning of life. Plato’s argument is everything we encounter in our world is an inferior copy of an ideal Form, and a Form is the perfect example. in other words, what that thing is independent of the moment you see it. For instance, you might see icicles hanging from your roof after a snowy day they may vary in shape and size and transparency, but they are all recognizable as icicles despite their differences. Plato suggests that this is because they all correspond in some measure to the ideal Icicle. My argument to Plato’s hostility is this - if it were not for the inferior viewing and renderings of artists, Plato would not have a base to make his argument from.

We only have some idea of what an ideal Icicle might be because of many interpretations of what people have seen and rendered as an image, writing, description. Through time we agree to give these interpretations a name. So, when we see an icicle, we can only describe what an icicle is because of many different interpretations none exact of course because every icicle is different. So, Plato is correct to say art can never truly capture the true form, because the fact of the matter is the icicle can only exist from the imperfect renderings and the naming of the of those renderings. So, with this in mind each interpretation will affect each of us in a different way, it is only the familiarity of the image’s stories, writing and the interpretation that give us ways to think about objects or ideas. Plato’s theory of the Forms also poses another problem. philosophically is useful as a descriptive category but turns damaging when it is used as it as a measuring stick. The desire to produce a work that is worthy of perfection is impossible. But if we stop the interpretations of individual artists, we stop the collective gathering of the idea. We can never capture what is the perfect form but in the pursuit of trying to capture the form or the Idea in the moment we experience it, we create something that is perfect in its own uniqueness. And if what we create is enough to stir the hearts of those who have come across it we have a great piece of art, the artist way of interpreting the moment the various branchespainting, music, literature is the part of the collective that moves us toward the closest we can ever come to understanding who we are. We are from creation and creation is from us.