Express Yourself: The Authors/Facets of Art and Design

By: aromaproductions on 1:41 PM

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Art and design are nothing new.  Artists, no matter what their media, are simply continuing visionary expressions that began with what we call creation.

Some people have a calling to continue the work that started millions of years ago. The cave men did it. The oldest cave art was found in Spain 40,000 years ago.

The African griots continue to express the history and culture of their people in song and spoken word.

The old bards, (professional poets of medieval Gaelic and Irish culture), troubadours (11^th century European composers and performers of lyrics), the sculptors, ancient and modern, and wood carvers of fetishes and gods are examples of interpreters of their surroundings and events.

These artists/performers have a special connection to the world and are subliminal prophets working quietly under the radar and influencing us in unknown ways.

Art is defined as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

The various branches of creative activity include painting, music, literature, and dance.”

Writers, in expressing their art form, assume the role of gods while creating an imaginary world in which s/he builds fictional towns, in which fictional people are placed and shackled with problems that they must find solutions to. This bit of fantasy is often a recreation or interpretation of the real world

Art is part of our everyday life. Look around the room you sit in. Everything around you, everything you use was created by someone. It has been said that all useful and well-constructed design is art. “Art is something that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing to our eyes."

Nature, too, is an artist. Inspect the flowers in your garden, the individual design of leaves, the numerous types of cacti found in the desert, the colorful fish found in the ocean.

The night sky is sketched with stars, some which we have labelled The Big and Little Dippers.

The night sky outlined by its surrounding landscape is a photographer's dream.

Look at a spider working at its web? Hasn’t the spider, too, inspired our own patterns? Isn’t nature our most potent muse?

The human being itself is the design of something many have identified as God. The human anatomy and the function of its delicate parts is one of nature's greatest wonders.

So express yourself.  It is your destiny. Do not suppress the artist or inventor within because you are, in turn, stifling something greater than you.

Below is one of my favorite modern artist, Les Lumeh, of  Liberia whose brilliant work is waiting to reach out and touch the world.

I am a poet and this is how I express myself.

Ancestral Easter

She came, Ēostre

Anglo-Saxon goddess,

dressed in green fertility.

At the heralding of dawn

she brought us spring in the

light of the sun. And then

began the birthing,

the beginning of all things.

Man, too, came to the world

in a cloud of dust. And

captured in the wet

of  Eostre’s dewy lips,

the forming of mankind began.

© Althea Romeo-Mark

Lifting Dark Clouds

A downpour of sadness,

after a flood of angry words,

is a drenched cloak on my shoulders.

Remorse, spoken in your eyes,

followed with words warm as sunlight,

eases the storm.

 “I love you.”

Dark clouds,

only passing,

have lifted.

© Althea Romeo-Mark