The Most Sublime Unit of Being
A favourite Twitter group is Canadian Paintings: https://twitter.com/CanadaPaintings.
On that group, I discovered The Rainbow, by William Blair Bruce, 1888, which reminds me of some photographs I’ve made:
In this photograph I took, shown below, I wasn’t trying to emulate any specific painting. I was stretching the limits of the relationships among pixels to come up with an image I liked. I mean “liked” in Christopher Alexander’s sense:
“To have a hope of reaching the [true] I, there is a simple rule that must be followed. You must make each thing, shape each thing, so that you really like it, so that it really pleases you.” (Italics are Alexander’s)
A pixel is defined as one of many “small, square single-colored display elements that comprise an image.”
A pixel is the fundamental unit or element of an image. Even painters could recognize fundamental elements of an image. Perhaps it could be called the smallest visible mark, but each painter has to define that individually if they even care to.
Pixels and painter’s marks are applied in many ways. No rules are saying how they should be applied. Painters and photographers are free to express themselves in whatever way truly pleases them.
Before being an artist, or while growing as an artist, you must find the pixels which make you. What is the most sublime unit of your being?
Because how can you please yourself in Alexander’s sense — that is, how can you reach the true I in a work of art — unless you know the true I?
What is the pixel, the most sublime unit of being, which may be called the true I?
Alan Watts tells us,
“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever.”
What is he telling us? You have to figure it out for yourself. For me, he is speaking about freedom, something immeasurable, something that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.
In my view, we use our immeasurable self to apply the measured in order to communicate the immeasurable. The result could be called art.