I argue that art is the appreciation of creation in itself. Art is the product and process of creation.  

Forget the conception of ‘fine art’ (a socially subjective idea of what artworks are better than others, which is what many mistake ‘art’ for). Art is particles buzzing together in a certain form, emitting colour, texture, contextual hints. The form of those particles can be everything and anything. It becomes a sort of verb, rather than a noun.  

You can experience, experiment and mould the particles to build your own system/construct. It’s paintings, buildings, people, society. Multilayered. It plays with you, makes a novelty of everything. It makes you appreciate the dancing particles, so free, but weak and easily moulded and influenced. Subject to degradation, death and external forces, like us, you see the construct and novelty that ‘life’ truly is, what we may be.  

Existence can be argued to be built up of systems/constructs we build and perceive as ourselves, say is ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’, set over ‘time’. Name, clothes, what we consume, our ‘hobbies’, ‘work’ and role in ‘society’. Specifics fill those labels. We seem to really enjoy filling out the constantly flowing blankness in ‘time’ and ‘space’, with our ‘existence’. Creating, repeating in routines, systems and constructs, for the sake of long term continuation. To what avail?  

For are we not also simply a group of material particles surviving, in a chance atmosphere?  

The feeling that no matter the mask you wear, reality, people surrounding you or your personal efforts, you dress to impress. For exactly who and for what? One set of particles dancing, offering an appearance, trading certain goods and services to another set of particles. That’s in itself a system we have gone through the process of creating, for ourselves, satisfying each other’s limitless needs and wants.  

The goods and services being psychological and physical urges, chemical reactions triggered by the movement of us as particles, that we crave. Our existence desperately tries to fill in the space, the sea that we swim in.  

When I’m not sleeping, I’m hungry. I’m hungry for something, someone or even nothing. For this gives me internal and external recognition, will tell me that I ‘live’. That I am someone, and that others and everything else thereby live, too. I am a product of my being. Us equals a product of creation and exists through a process of being. Likewise with art, everything else. 

To purely be in ‘reality’ is a chore. Senses and mind overloaded with information, conceptions, perceptions. The presence of yourself, others and everything existing controls and tires you endlessly. You don’t know what to focus on. You end up focusing on what you are restricted to, to a limited boundary of current reality. You spend life fighting for a set of personal subjective systems/constructs that you try to convince yourself and others is objective.  

But we find safety (one of our primal urges) and stability of our existence in art – the various realities of different objects, people, experiences, shows, books, food, etc. Life can come to light – they provide triggers of positive or negative psychology, contrasts or complements, that feed our own constructed self, individually and collectively.  

Then art can introduce in some curiosity. Learning that nothing is objective or fact. What you see, hear or believe is not all. That there is an endless array to which the particles can buzz, and be arranged, trigger different reactions, and realities. Everything we are immediately aware of is based on perspective, systems and constructs that we have made and perceive. Everything is made of the same matter in the end, the particles, wild and free. 

I stare at the sea and it all melds into one for me. Everyone and everything, the same to me. Everything begins to comfort me, and I can finally accept reality. 

Art can therefore be a simple practise of mindfulness, or being grateful for all that is, has and can be. 

You, I, and everyone else can benefit from art to find life’s avail in. If we try to see, appreciate, understand and learn more about what’s in our little shared conditioned reality, the more curious we are. The less we ignore the existence of and fear the known, unknown and hide in constructs/systems that limit our potential form. The more the sea expands its horizons. Simple yet bountiful. You and I are particles bouncing free.