Art and bellies full

Food makes sense to me. Our desire for it, our pleasure derived from it. The feeling of satisfaction when we feel connected to its creation. It makes sense that food full of nutrition or energy tastes good to us, and food that has gone bad or is bland is either harmful or contains little benefit. It even makes sense that some food itself has evolved or been evolved by us to show us its flavours: brightly coloured fruit shows us it is full of sugars, the pulp encasing the seed that the plant wants us to carry away. It makes sense to me that when we are well fed we are happy; that the quality of our lives improves with the quality of our cuisine and that growing our own food can enhance our enjoyment of life even further.

I can extend this theory to other elements of our lives. To our community which sustains and supports us, to our homes and tools and equipment; neccessity and simplicity; utility and beauty; the skill of our hands come into contact with the raw materials from our backyard...

I can understand music. The rhythms which mimic the beating hearts of our mothers; the syncroncity which only humans possess; the reminisence of the cries of war and the cries of grief or happiness. And finally the perfect mathematical harmony that creates pleasing resonances within our ear drums, and the hearts that become one heart when the voices become one voice.

I can understand theatre, literature and storytelling. They are there to teach us, to warn us and to ask us what we might do if we found ourselves in such a situation. They ask us to reflect, to improve our relationship to the world, and thus they enhance our ability to survive. Or at base, a story might communicate what tasks we have done, so that our neighbour knows that it is done, and the knowledge of the work gets passed from one person to two people, and thus two lives become one and the work is shared...

But what of art? The music of the eye? It serves no strict evolutionary purpose... nor do we need it for survival. It has no rhythm, the harmonies of the frequency of light cannot account for it when we are constantly receiving such a full spectrum of light. I could understand it as a discipline for training the eye, but that is an academic subject which holds no bearing on need. I could understand it as a method of representation and communication, but it so often does neither of those things.

So I return to the basics. I return to brightly coloured fruit. The colour tells us that it will taste good and is full of nutrition and energy. Our eyes, our minds and the fruit have evolved together so that this can be the case. So we know that by consuming the brightly coloured fruit we will derive pleasure and health and the quality of our lives will be improved. Beauty is thus equatable with health, pleasure and life, and ugliness and decay points to disease and death.

And art*? If we enjoy art because it is beautiful... it quite simply put, makes life taste better. If art is the celebration of beauty, it will guide us towards health, happiness and life. If we are deprived of beauty, we will feel ill because our minds will panic, afraid that we have entered an environment of death and disease.

Thus art is the affirmation of life... it is a symptom of health and when a culture produces good art, it means that that culture is thriving; bellies full, happy and healthy.

What purpose art serves doesn't stop there... but this satisfies my question of our basic human relationship to it... before philosophy, culture and identity... before subject and before politics. Art makes life taste better.

*I more or less put conceptual art under the category of philosophy and art that addresses and communicates ideas or dark matters under storytelling.

Portrait of an artist as a young farmer

I'm beginning my artist's apprenticeship, working under Wesley Bates, a wood engraver, painter & private press in Clifford--a short drive from my farm and a shorter drive to Caitlin's where I was this past season.

Wesley moved here a number of years ago, enamored by farming and the country and finding this building in town, a shop front downstairs for his workshop and gallery, and with ample living space upstairs. The price was something even a professional artist could afford. In his time here he has been an advocate of culture in the country, and bringing the city gaze up north to find that the city is not the only place where art can thrive. A self-declared armchair farmer, he is *tickled* to see the young city-turned-farmers like Caitlin and Tarrah moving up here and deciding that this is where they want to live and farm. There are also murmurs of more artists buying buildings up here every day... the first early steps before culture, commerce and community can move in and create booming neighbourhoods.

But we still have work to do. The quality of the majority of the artwork could use a boost (Wesley and his daughter and ex-wife exceptionally excepted). We could use some sort of an art school or space for classes and life-drawing sessions. I personally need to re-examine the importance of the arts in community. Not as a justification, but to renew its purpose specifically within this part of the world.

I also need to find a way to bring good art up here. I suppose it will start with bringing good artists up to my farm, and seeing what happens.

Aldergrove Farm

Aldergrove Farm. That's my farm.

My family and I bought our farm. 75 acres in Grey County, just outside Mount Forest in Ontario. A two-hour drive from Toronto.

Rolling hills, a maple grove and two forested areas with a creek running through. Roughly 45 acres of pasture rolling in and out between the woods.

I am unbelievably excited and terrified. Maybe not even as terrified as I should be, but I've got no choice. And even if I had a choice, I would still choose this over anything.

...

Our offer was accepted the morning I left for Halifax. It had competition from another offer, a better offer. But the story goes that the owner, 83 years old and born in that house, adopted a daughter who passed away when she was ten. He still tears up thinking about her. And luck would have it that I reminded him of her, so he wanted it to go to me. But we had to meet the better offer.

Back and forth on the phone with the agent, the owner tearing up the background and my mother and I poised to drive to the train station while madly putting our brains together to figure the money. Yes. Yes we can meet the offer.

Still shaking we get in the car and I'm at the train station. I recognize someone from behind, my ex. Who I haven't seen since we were together... living together. "Matt... I just bought a farm." "Glynis. I'm going to Mongolia. Today..." He saw his new girlfriend off who was getting on the same train as me (who I didn't know about) as I got my ticket, and then we caught up, still in the daze of the story of the daughter, buying the farm and running into one of the most important people in my life who I hadn't seen in over half a year, and who I wouldn't see again for at least nine months.

I got on the 30-hour train... and the credits must have rolled. I'm now waiting for the next movie to begin...

...


My apprenticeship begins on Friday and I'll be close to my farm. We take possession a week into the new year and by spring I'll have dogs, chicks and ducks, an acre ploughed and a sunroom full of seedlings.