Look up at the sky. Are there clouds, grey and solemn, in a windless sky, reflecting your melancholy? Or wisps floating carelessly on a breeze, skipping with joy? Is there an unblemished azure sky, that reflects your untroubled soul? Is the horizon drenched in a hot red sunset, angry with desire, making you feel alive?
How is your emotional landscape today? Paul Cézanne wrote that “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”Cézanne describes emotion as a necessary element involved in the creation of art. By using the term 'art' Cézanne broadens the topic beyond just painting, although he was a very famous painter. Instead, he includes all forms of creative genius. If they all draw from the same well, it must be deep water made of intense feelings, as light and dark as the end results.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir wrote “Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.”
What is the colour of your emotional skyscape?
Emotional landscapes
To the painter John Constable, the sky was full of emotion. He called it, in a letter written in 1821, the “Key note and chief organ of sentiment in painting”. It is for this reason that he dedicated much of his time to collecting and classifying the clouds. Walking out from his house in Hampstead - at that time a village near London - with a bundle of papers, and a pocket full of brushes, he would sit for hours on the Heath (one of my favourite places in London) rapidly painting the changing shapes above him, the wind rustling his papers, rain drops pooling the colours. Once home, he arranged his sketches according to the latest meteorological classifications, noting the date, time and weather conditions.
Constable wanted to master the emotional language of the sky - and when you look at his paintings, it’s clear that he did. This may even account for his mastery. But he also lived in an age obsessed with the desire to label and put into categories, a passion for taxonomy that would always sit uneasily with the melting, drifting skies. Clouds are so hard to fix. Arranging them into groups, as the art critic John Ruskin discovered forty years later, was always a matter “More of convenience than true description”. The clouds fold into one another and drift away. They switch allegiances until it’s hard to tell them apart. This is also the case with emotion. We must learn to identify our emotions, as they are our greatest teachers. We may hold several emotions simultaneously, once we have started to allow ourselves feel, after the thawing of the ice of disassociation.
Joni Eareckson Tada wrote "Well, painting is the one thing I do, that is just me. It's me and easels, and the pencils. It's a chance to express (in other words to be vulnerable) all that I've got inside (in other words emotions), that I sometimes keep hidden. And I think that's why I paint big broad, wide open landscapes." Healing begins with feeling.
Sometimes it feels more like we belong to our emotions, than they to us. But perhaps it’s only by paying attention to our feelings, by trying to capture them as landscapes as Constable did the clouds, that we can truly understand ourselves and experience shifts in our perception. As Marcel Proust wrote "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
Emotional weather
Recognising and naming our emotional weather can be just as peculiar a task. Try to describe exactly how you feel right now. Is your heart fluttering excitedly for the person who’ll be waiting when you step off the train? Or your stomach tight at the thought of today’s deadline? Perhaps it was curiosity which nudged you to read this article. Or reluctance, studded with giddy defiance, that is making you linger over its content. Are you feeling hopeful? Joy?
Some emotions really do wash the world in a single colour, like the terror felt as the car skids, or the euphoria of falling in love. Others, like clouds, are harder to grasp. Plan a surprise for a loved one and you might feel anticipation crinkled with glee and creased at the edges with a faint terror – what if they hate it? Storm off during an argument and it might be hard to tell the precise moment at which your indignation ends and your clammy passive agressive self-loathing begins. There are some emotions which are so quiet that they slip past before we’ve even had a chance to spot them, like that momentary sense of comfort, as a substitute for real love, which makes your hand reach out for a familiar brand at the supermarket. And then there are those that brood on the horizon, the ones we hurry away from, fearing they will burst upon us: The jealousy which makes our fingers itch to search a loved one’s pockets, or the shame that can goad us into self-destruction.
Look at the clouds, and you might see an emotion colour everything for an instant - but then the skies will rearrange themselves, back to blue sky, and it’ll be gone. You have surrendered the emotion.
Creativity is driven by our emotions
Success comes from creativity. Creativity comes from emotions. So success is fuelled by our emotions.
There are no good or bad emotions. If we can hold them all in a healthy way then we can generate light. Nothing is demonised and nothing is idealised. We should not be attached to either 'good' or 'bad' feelings. All emotions are part of the spectrum of light. We need to believe in and see the rainbow as the miracle that is life.
“The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech” - This art quote by Vincent van Gogh almost makes you think he was in a trance-like emotional state when he created his artwork.
Pablo Picasso wrote “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” This is so true in my experience. Picasso also said "The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." Rembrandt wrote “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God.” No less! Jackson Pollock wrote “Painting is Self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” So, creativity is transformative. Hans Hoffman wrote that "A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world."
Oksana Rus "Painting is a way to express emotions beyond words." Creativity is essential to wellbeing. Devin wrote that "Art is your emotions flowing in a river of imagination." Chris DeRubeis wrote that "All art should inspire and evoke emotions. Art should be something you can actually feel.' It's a way of connecting with others through emotions.
Isadora Duncan wrote that "To awaken human emotion is the highest form of art."Nadia Boulanger wrote that "Art is the medium in which emotion is expressed." Wale wrote "Every artist is supposed to get emotional. You're painting pictures of emotions." Michael Bassey Johnson wrote that “The true artist resides on the inside. The outside is chaos, bondage and destruction. The inside is peace, freedom, and creation.”
Albert Einstein chips in, writing that "True art is characterised by an irrestible urge in the creative artist." Do you feel that urge? Therein lies your path and your success.
C.S. Lewis wrote that "Feelings ought to be kept for literature and art, where they are delightful." Oscar Wilde wrote that "Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life." Art takes many forms, not just painting landscapes. Make art of your whole life. As Pope John Paul II wrote "Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: In a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece." Be fuelled by your emotions, don't suppress them, to drive your creativity and success. Andre Malraux wrote "If you can't make art, make your life a work of art."
Your life is a work of art and you are the artist creating it. It can be big, bold, and full of color or simply shades of gray. You get to decide. Art can take on many different forms and styles, but ultimately, the goal is to create something beautiful or thought provoking. Artists reveal themselves through their work, unless they hold back, play it safe, or tell themselves they don’t know how. Creating art comes from within. It is inspired by your heart and soul. It is something felt first and then expressed out into the world. Life is like that, too. You can paint a new version of your life that speaks to your soul and feels fully you. And then, when you step back and look at it, you will know it is your own masterpiece and be able to say, “Well done! You got this!”.
As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "Art is the proper task of life."
Emotions have a charm of their own. Oscar Wilde wrote in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' "And how delightful other people’s emotions were!– much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him."
I am writing a series of articles about different emotions. Watch this space…
These are the emotions that I have covered for you (click on the link to be taken to them):
Namaste.
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.