Artistic Expression and Viewer Experience

Kawakawa Cabin 1 by George Elvin

In my artwork, I want to help people make the most of their time on this precious planet. Experience of nature is one of the best ways to make the most of our time and find joy here during our stay. I am looking for a smile. Then I’ll know that I’ve achieved what I set out to do.

This drawing is one in a set of four drawings of a meditation hut I designed for an architectural competition. I was trying to express a sense of calm and stillness. When Gaston Bachelard says that artistic expression creates an experience of being in the viewer, it reminds me of this quote from Francisco Varela, the Chilean biologist, when he said that mind and world arise together. In other words, the experience of art is not shaped only by the work or the mind of the experiencer, but by the interaction of the two.

This use of form on the part of the artist to induce an experience of the formless, of silence and stillness, may seem like a contradiction. However, like the Dutch phenomenologist, JH Van den Berg, points out, one of the prime functions of art is to present a solution to problems that reflection cannot hope to solve. I am motivated by love for every living thing (and many non-living things, too.) Life is universal, and we are fortunate to have this opportunity to make the most of it. I want to speak for nature through my artwork—a kind of hybrid synergy between a human and nature. You are part of that synergy, that experience. Thank you for being here.