There are literally thousands (or even million) of ways visual artists express their emotions through their art. In fact, simply making while emotional will result in a residue of those emotions reaching the canvas, paper, board or other material.
The more skilled an artist becomes the more they are able to weave their emotional state into a process where the emotion is a critical part of their art.
Where can we see it?
- Brush strokes, colors, topic treatment
- This sounds a bit ethereal, but we can see or feel when an artists really challenged a topic - confronted the emotions within themselves.
- It’s NOT true that extreme or hot blooded emotions are the most important. In fact, we often remember softly liking, being incredibly impressed by something, connecting with it, feeling a sense from it - all pretty soft.
There are many incredibly arcane academic training institutions that teaches that art is about ideas. Yet the great more recent art (that which survives the test of time) generally reveals emotions and is inherently emotional. Older art often captures an emotional sense while being less overt about it. Yet we can’t look at two people or a place or thing or any painting or drawing or sculpture without feeling emotion - even if that feeling is revulsion at the dry isolation of it to ideas.
RELATED QUESTIONS On QUora.com
I ASKED SOME FOLKS IF ART IS THE WAY TO EXPRESS EMOTIONS. HERE'S WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY
Nick Kok, Fulltime Artist, Commercial Artist, Web Art Instructor
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
I honestly don’t know. Right now I am primarily working in pen & ink. I do interior northern rainforest scenes. They are an extremely fine detailed representation of what I find when I hike in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t think about placing any emotional value in my art and yet others can tell my state of mind at the time of creation. How? I look at my work and don’t see it, are they just making this up. Trouble is that their interpretation of my emotional state is always accurate and it drives me nuts. I hide my emotions quite well but, apparently, not when I create my art. I believe that in the act of creating art the emotional element bypasses my conscious thought process and buries itself in the image. Either that or everybody is just messing with me.
Yotam Zohar, Professional Artist and Classically Trained Painter
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
I would encourage you to consider the role of the artist less as someone who expresses emotions and more as someone who expresses ideas.
Expressing an emotion simply means acting upon it in a way that is perceptible. Artists do this the same way everybody else does, and the notion that artists somehow use their jobs as their emotional outlet has implications that are potentially damaging to those in our discipline.
It’s not that artists never express ideas that contain emotional baggage or connotations, but those emotions don’t have to belong to the artist. For example, a painter working on a painting depicting the horror of genocide does not have to have been a victim of genocide in order to express the idea of the feelings associated with that kind of victimhood.
In many cases, strong emotions can actually get in the way of the kind of productivity and attitudes that are needed in order to create artwork. Ascribing artistic achievement to simply “feeling something” undermines the effort, discipline, and skills required to make art.
Graham Hansen, Producer/vocalist at Handsome Graham
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
My art forms are music and writing, I love to sit down and just create a new thing that sounds different from the thing I made yesterday, write a story, or write song lyrics.
I’d say the emotional influence is subconscious. It’s less apparent in the instrumental, where however I feel that day might have only a subtle impact on the notes I wrote out. But when it comes to words, oh boy.
Anything expressed artistically in words is a window to the fucking soul. I’ve been embarrassed to share my music with people because of the content of my lyrics being very very personal. But there’s just no other way to do it. Writing words just to write will sound inauthentic, and it’s hard to nail down why, but people can tell. When I first started writing raps, my friend heard what I was doing and encouraged me to “just be real.” I was talking about things I’d never experienced or really felt, and it showed to him.
It’s like the episode of Futurama where Bender wants to become a country music star: he writes all these songs, but people don’t like them because he hasn’t lived any of these experiences. So he goes out into the world and lives out the exact plot of the songs he’d written previously, and when he gets back, people love the songs. Authenticity is huge.
So I rap about the real influences and issues in my life. Maybe they aren't mainstream topics, but it’s just what comes out. You can only do what you know, and I know myself pretty well. At this point, music and writing are such great subjective outlets that I’m not sure how I’d express my emotions sufficiently without them. Creating is how you express yourself.
There really is no other way to make art but for it to come from the heart and express (and even expose) yourself.
Cindi Murphy, studied The Arts & Philosophy at Orange Coast College
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
Through your art you can create a disturbing image, a beautiful pastoral scene, an amazing photograph. To achieve the results you're looking for you just express yourself in whatever way speaks to your emotions and creativity.
Julia Yeckley, i have emotions. i dont want them, nor do i try to exlain. they dont make sense
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
Lots of ways. Something as color, or. Lack of it. Subject matter. And how they portray it. If you look into an art exhibit a painting, or photograph for instance. You can start to see what the arist sees. Or his view on the world. What makes him angry. Or what field his love. Or there are different artists who are associated with different types of art. Like van gough had, abstractism. Picasso had different periods of color. Whatever his reasons he painted things in blue shades or I believe red. He had several but his blue period seems to be the most infamous. Andy Warhol started pop art. The tomato can that's just so popular. I don't get it. But that's probably the point. That there isn't one. Can you imagine not having any of that and coming up with random pictures and putting them in an exhibit, and have people act confused. My kind of exhibit.
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
When artists draw emotions into thier art is by useing different shading and colours like if it a happy piece the colours would be bright and shading not dark but if its sad the artist will use dark colours and dark shading
©Gerrishon Sirere June 22, 2018
Effortlessly
