The Artist's Sight

The Artist's Sight

    “Master, I wish to be your pupil.”
    The old man raised his eyes from the bare patch of dirt in front of his seat and considered the young woman standing before him. “I see.”
    She was silent a few moments, as though wondering if he would say more, but the old man had learned long ago that silence was frequently the easiest way to get a person to talk.
    “I brought my portfolio,” she said at last. “With my finest pieces.”
    “I see.” This time the old man did not look up, instead picking up a stick and beginning a sketch in the loose soil between his feet.
    “Would you—” She hesitated, clearly unsure of herself, and went on, “Would you like to see them?”
    The old man continued sketching with his stick. “You may pull two out of your portfolio, if you wish me to see them,” he said.
    He heard a breath—a sound very like a sigh, but lighter—and a few moments of paper scraping against paper, and then she held two sheets, covered in light grey charcoal markings and lacquered against smudging, out to him.
    The old man drew a few more lines in the dirt, then set his stick aside and accepted the papers.
    On the first was a likeness of a man's face, drawn out in soft lines and carefully placed smudges. But it was a face, and nothing more. An excellent depiction of what could be seen on the outside.
    The second bore a depiction of a deer, frozen in the moment before flight, drawn with smooth, graceful lines and gentle shading. Another excellent depiction of what could be seen on the surface.
    The old man considered the papers for a moment more, then returned them to their artist. “You have excellent technique,” he said at last. “I have rarely seen such lifelike depictions from one so young.”
    For a moment, her face remained blank. Then his words penetrated her mind, and a smile spread from one cheek to the other, and her face grew rosy with pleasure.
    “You have great potential,” the old man went on. “And you are very good at drawing what you can see. The only fault I have with your work is that you do not see nearly enough.”
    The smile froze on that rosy-cheeked face, then faded. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean that you do not truly see what it is you draw. You have shown me excellent likenesses of a man and a deer—but likenesses is all they are, and all they will ever be. They are incredibly detailed, wonderfully realistic, but they lack the spark that takes an artwork from good to great. In short, you lack one of the most fundamental aspects of art. You see what the eye can see, and nothing more. You have utterly failed to capture the essence of what you have drawn.”
    There was a long pause. “I... don't understand,” the young woman admitted, and the old man's heart ached to see the wounded pride evident on her face.
    The old man stood and gestured to the stump he'd been sitting on. “Place your portfolio there,” he said. “It shall be safe enough, for the present.”
    She obeyed. Reluctantly.
    “Come with me.”
    He led her into the forest, deep beneath the shadows of the great pines and oaks that populated it. They stopped at the bank of a calm stream, and the old man gestured to the open glade on the other side of it. “Tell me what you see,” he said.
    “I see a clearing,” she said. “Where the sun can reach the forest floor.”
    “Ah. Well, then, here is paper and pencil, and a flat stump to work on; draw it for me.”
    An hour later she finished, a satisfied expression on her face. She rose from her seat on the ground and proffered the paper to the old man.
    He accepted it, glanced down at it.
    Then let go of it, letting it flutter to the ground. “You still lack,” he said. “Tell me again. What do you see?”
    “I see a clearing,” she said. “And that's what I drew.”
    The old man studied her for a long moment, then sighed. “I see you still have much to learn.”
    “You're impossible!” she said, voice rising. “I have trained to draw my whole life! I've studied under the finest masters in all the great cities! I have practiced every technique, learned every skill, drawn in every style! What more can there be?"
    “If you have learned so much, why seek my instruction? Why are you not yet a master teaching her own pupils? If you have met the standards of the masters, why have you not been declared a great artist?”
    “Well, I—” She paused, and her face quivered, crumpling into an indignant, angry, hurt expression.        “None of them ever said I was good enough,” she finally said. “They all said the same thing you do.”     She bent down and picked up the paper on the ground, stared at it for a moment, then crumpled and smashed it between her hands. “They all think my works are subpar--that I'm not ready.”
    “And every one of them is right,” the old man said. “You have learned technique, and I commend you for that. It is wonderful that you have learned the skills, practiced the techniques you've been given.     You have the makings of a great artist, but you have not yet learned to be one.”
    She looked to him, pain in her eyes. “How can I learn what I lack?”
    The old man sat down on the stump and placed a hand to his forehead. “You need to see what truly is,” he said. “Not just the outer look of the thing, but what it is inside. What gives it life.”
    Her brow wrinkled. “I've studied anatomy,” she said. “Of both man and beast. I've learned biology, physiology, and even medicine. I can depict muscles and skeletal structures accurately.”
    “I am not speaking of the physical things that comprise your subjects. Muscles and bones are important, but they are not what give a drawing life.”
    “My drawings are perfectly lifelike!”
    “Lifelike, yes. But they do not have life.”
    “I don't understand.”
    “You seem not to understand a great many things.”
    “What!” She opened her mouth to go on, but the old man raised his hand.
    “Peace, child. To be an artist, you must first learn to see. If you cannot see what truly is, your creation is a mere likeness. You have drawn an excellent likeness of the glade on the other side of this stream—a likeness that you have also excellently destroyed—but you have not captured its essence. What makes it a glade? What makes it what it is?”
    “The open space within it, among a forest full of trees,” she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
    “So it is. But that is not all it is.”
    “What? That doesn't make any sense!”
    “You have drawn a likeness of the glade. But a likeness is not art, no matter how good it is. This depiction does not change my perspective on the clearing. It does not suggest another point of view. Though I see the glade through your picture, I do not see anything more. It is a copy of what is actually there, and therefore inferior to the experience of viewing the glade in person. So long as all you draw are likenesses, your drawings will always be inferior to the real thing. Few people wish for likenesses to hang upon their walls for just this reason. To be human is to love art. But if the drawing in front of you is a mere copy of art, and not art in itself, what good is it?”
    “None, I suppose," she said slowly. "So... How do I learn to see?”
    The old man shook his head. “That, I do not know. The best I can do is this: take a fresh sheet of paper and your pencil, sit down at this stump, and write out everything you see in that meadow. In a few hours, I shall return to check on you.”
    It was barely fifteen minutes before she approached his seat, where he was perusing the remainder of the drawings in her portfolio.
    “What is it, child?”
    “What's the point of this exercise? All I see is grass, flowers, and trees. Maybe a deer, if I'm lucky. It's taken no time at all to list everything, unless you want me to name every blade of grass in the glade and write it down. What am I missing?”
    The old man set her portfolio aside and gently took her arm, leading her back to the edge of the river.     “Look,” he said. “And see the meadow. Not as grass, or flowers, or deer. Not as space in the midst of a forest. Do not describe it; your drawing is your description. See it as it truly is.” With those words, he left her once again.
    It was dark by the time she returned, a triumphant expression on her face. “I have it!” she said, presenting her paper to the old man. On one side was the short list of things she'd seen in the glade; on the reverse was a likeness, different from her first attempt, but a likeness all the same.
    The old man shook his head and led her back to the river. “Perhaps the darkness will offer you another perspective. Remember, what you see does not have to be a physical object. If all you draw are the objects in the scene, your sketch will not take on a life of its own.”
    This time the old man lingered a short distance away, sitting on a fallen log in the shadow of the trees and watching her in the light of the rising moon.
    As the stars twinkled into view, the young woman grew agitated, pacing back and forth and muttering to herself. She was too far away for the old man to distinguish the words, but her frustration was clear.    He returned to her side, took her hand, and led her back to the stump. “Do not move from this spot until you have seen the meadow.”
    “But how will I know when I've seen it?”
    “You will know because you will know. There is no experience quite like seeing for the first time. Be patient.”
    The old man returned to his fallen tree, content to observe the young woman all night, if need be.
    She had the impatience of someone to whom learning came easily. She had worked for this her entire life, and yet was unused to expending much effort to learn something. She was anxious to draw, but could not see the spirit and purpose in the things she drew—and so drew not for art's own sake, but for some other reason. Perhaps she felt a need to prove herself to someone. To a friend? A family member? The various masters who had refused her works, and who had held her back from her own mastership?
    Yes, that was it. She drew to prove herself, not because she wanted to create art. Perhaps she had begun with a desire to create, when she had been a little girl picking up a pencil for the first time. But now, drawing was a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Pride had taken the place of childlike joy in the art, and now she fought to prove herself and show her worth.
    The old man nodded, understanding.
    At the same moment, the young woman stood, a light in her eyes.
    Smiling, the old man approached her. “You have seen.”
    “Yes,” she replied. “I have.”
    “Tell me, then. What do you see?”
    “I see life,” she said. "Growing things reaching up to the moonlit heavens to do as they were made to and bring glory to God."
    “Good.” He offered her a blank sheet of paper and a brand new charcoal pencil. “Draw it.”